Let me paint you a picture.
It's a golf trip with the boys. The kind you plan for months, the kind where everyone's trash-talking in the group chat for weeks leading up. We're on a beautiful course. The weather is perfect. I've been striping it all day — driver, irons, the whole bag. I'm in my element. And then I miss a green.
No big deal, right? Everyone misses greens.
Except for me, in that moment, standing over a simple chip shot from just off the fringe, forty feet from the pin, plenty of green to work with, something happens that I can't explain and can't stop. As I take the club back, a fraction of a second before the downswing begins, my body is hijacked. There's no other word for it. Like an alien takes over. I feel nothing in my hands. My wrists fire violently, involuntarily — a full-body twitch that I had no hand in — and the club buries itself into the ground a foot behind the ball. The ball moves maybe three inches.
My buddies say nothing. That's almost worse.
I reset. Deep breath. Pre-shot routine. Visualize. Step in relaxed. Same thing happens.
I pick up the ball, mark a big X on the scorecard, and we move on. Nobody says a word. We've all quietly agreed that this is just the thing we don't talk about.
If you've found this page, you know exactly what I'm describing. You've probably lived some version of this story yourself. And if you have, I want you to know something before you read another word:
You are not weak. You are not alone. And there is a path out.
I'm Nick. I've had the chipping yips for over 25 years. And I'm writing this blog because I've finally — finally — found my way to the other side. Not a cure. Not a magic tip. Not a quick fix. Something better: a real, hard-won, deeply personal process. And I'm here to share every piece of it with you, because I know how terrible this feels. Nobody should have to go through it alone.
I grew up in the Tiger era. If you know, you know. When Tiger was dismantling fields and rewriting what was possible, golf wasn't just a hobby, it was an identity, a calling, a future. I bought in completely.
By the time I was a teenager, I was near scratch after just three years of serious play. Captain of my high school golf team. I hit the ball a long way with a smooth, buttery tempo. The swing came naturally to me. I was one of those kids people watched on the range.
But here's the thing about golf: the game has a way of finding your weakness and making it the whole story.
My junior golf playing partner at the local muni was a good golfer, but smaller and shorter off the tee. I'd routinely outdrive him by 50 yards. Didn't matter. Like a lot of shorter hitters, he'd developed a magical short game to compensate. He'd get up and down from everywhere. Chip, one putt. Pitch, one putt. Par. Par. Par. Me? I'd nearly drive a green and make bogey. He'd be hitting an 80-yard wedge to 15 feet; I'd miss the same green from 30 yards out. It became a running joke. Nick is green-high in two on a par five but somehow scrambles for bogey. The short guy misses a green and makes par. Again and again.
I laughed it off. But it was already planting something.
My short game was always the weak link. Not yippy, just underdeveloped, a real gap compared to the rest of my game. In competitive junior golf, I was getting up and down maybe half as often as my peers. On good days, I'd shoot a couple over by hitting 12 greens in regulation. On bad days, when I couldn't break 80, it was almost always because I'd missed too many greens and had nothing to fall back on. That cap on my potential gnawed at me. I knew what I could be. And I couldn't get there.
Then came college. I stepped away from serious golf and focused on studies, social life, all the adventures that come with it. But I'd still play the occasional casual round with friends. And that's when I first noticed something was really wrong. Not just weak chipping — wrong. An anxiety I couldn't name. A flinch I couldn't control. I was in shock and disbelief. I still remember my playing partner's jaw dropping the first time it happened, this look of "What the hell was that?" And from then on, standing over a chip shot meant full dread.
At first I tried not to think about it too hard. I wasn't playing seriously anyway. I went to grad school. Moved to New York. Barely touched a club for years.
Then I moved back to California. Good weather, beautiful courses, some money and time to invest in the game. I was ready to fall back in love with golf.
But the yips were waiting for me, patient as ever, like they'd just been sitting in the bag.
Here's what I need anyone who doesn't have the yips to understand:
This is not a mental weakness. This is not "just nerves." This is a neurological event — a full disconnection between your intention and your body — and it is one of the most disorienting experiences a golfer can have.
At my worst, I could miss the ball entirely.
Not skull it. Not chunk it. Miss it. And this after doing everything right. Hours of technique practice. Pre-shot routines. Deep breathing on the course. Visualization. I'd step into a chip feeling calm, loose, ready. And the moment the downswing began during that split second when the body takes over from the mind, I was gone. Taken over. No feeling in my hands. A violent, uncontrollable twitch. Club hits turf a foot behind the ball.
What followed was its own kind of hell. Skull it across the green. Chunk it back. Skull it again. Pick up. Walk to the next tee. Try not to make eye contact.
I started avoiding rounds with friends. Golf trips, the things I used to look forward to all year, became exercises in quiet survival. I'd yip my way through 18 holes, everyone would politely not mention it, and I'd fly home completely gutted.
Then the cycle would begin. Late-night searching online. Down the rabbit hole. A coach, a program, a tip that seemed promising. Work on it obsessively on the practice green. Feel it click. Arrive at the course with a flicker of hope. Have maybe one okay round, maybe just a less-bad one, and then watch it all fall apart the next time out.
Rinse. Repeat. For years. For decades.
If you're in that cycle right now, I see you. I know exactly where you are.
Over 25 years, I became an accidental expert in chipping yip remedies. Not by choice, by desperation. Here's an honest inventory of the categories I went through. Each of these will get its own deep-dive post eventually, with real talk about what worked, what didn't, and what surprised me. For now, here's the lay of the land.
PGA instructors, in-person and virtual. YouTube rabbit holes. Social media tips. Specific swing paths, wrist positions, impact checkpoints. Cross-handed chipping. I worked with coaches who had completely opposite philosophies. Nothing was clean. Everything was a compromise. But technique matters, and this category taught me a lot about my own tendencies.
This is the deep end of the pool. Sports psychologists. Hypnosis (yes, really). EFT tapping, where you literally tap on your head and body while saying mantras out loud. Did all the “therapies”: cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, accelerated resolution therapy, and fear exposure therapy. I worked with LMFT, which involves eye movements. Read countless books on self-esteem, the psychology of sport, Zen and golf. Same problem, wildly different approaches, wildly different results.
“Breaking the Yips Cycle” DVDs. Jim Waldron's chipping yips school. All the British guys with their online golf yip programs (not sure why so many of them are British lol). Programs built specifically for people like us. Some of this was genuinely valuable groundwork. None of it, alone, fixed me. Thousands of dollars spent, and zero regrets about trying.
Counting out loud during the swing. Looking away from the ball at impact. Tapping rhythms. Humming. Saying silly phrases mid-swing. Various methods designed to short-circuit the part of the brain that fires the yip. Some of these gave me real windows of freedom. None of them held up long-term on their own.
Lead tape to change the swing weight of my clubs. A flexible-shaft wedge. A wrist attachment to keep a flat wrist. New wedges, new grips. Chipping mats and nets. I chased equipment solutions the way a drowning man grabs at anything floating by. Some of it was interesting to try. None of it was the answer.
Every variation imaginable. Step-in sequences, trigger words, visualization protocols, breathing patterns. The routine matters, more than most people give it credit for. But only as part of a larger picture. On its own, it's a house of cards.
Nothing worked. Everything worked.
I know that sounds maddening. Bear with me.
There is no single tip, coach, program, technique, or piece of equipment that will fix serious chipping yips. I wasted years believing there was, that I was one discovery away from cracking it, that the right instructor or the right mental approach would deliver some "aha" moment and that would be that.
That's not how this works.
What actually works is a devoted, consistent, holistic practice that builds from the inside out. That's harder to hear than "try this grip change," I get it. But it's the truth. It requires real work across multiple dimensions at once: technique, mental game, nervous system, self-image, daily habits, your relationship with failure and pressure. All of it, together.
Read a book on self-esteem? Genuinely helpful, probably a necessary foundation. But self-esteem alone won't fix your yips. Build a daily mindfulness practice? Worth doing, not because meditating cures anything, but because it trains your mind in a way that makes everything else more effective, especially your pre-shot routine when the pressure is real. Learn a technically sound chipping motion? Absolutely critical. But technique without the mental scaffolding collapses every time the stakes get real.
It's additive. It's cumulative. And it's personal. What resonated with me might do nothing for you, and that's okay. That's just how this is. Your job is to find your combination. That's what this whole site is about.
The moment things genuinely started to click for me was when I stopped hunting for the one thing and started building a consistent, whole practice — technique, mindset, routine, mental health work, all of it together, all of it regularly. Not perfectly. With setbacks. But consistently, over time.
Today I play with real confidence. I chip freely, not always, not under every kind of pressure, but enough. Enough to enjoy this game again. Enough to actually be the golfer I always knew I was.
That feeling, after 25 long and painful years, is why I'm sitting here writing this.
You found this page because you're suffering. I know that. Nobody stumbles onto a site called chippingyips.com by accident.
I'm not a coach. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not selling anything. I'm just a guy who spent 25 years in the trenches and came out the other side, and who genuinely can't stand the thought of other golfers grinding through this alone the way I did. Golf is too great a game for that.
Every post here covers something I tried, in depth and without spin. What I actually did, what helped, what didn't, and what kind of golfer it might click for. Technique. Mental frameworks. The weird stuff. The expensive stuff. The slightly embarrassing stuff. All of it. It will also include real life moments and struggles because I've found that recognizing that other people go through similar struggles is part of the process to overcome them. It'll be in no particular order; I'll just post things that came to mind but I'll aim to cover it all eventually.
This isn't one-size-fits-all advice. Think of it as a menu, a map, a starting point for your own process.
If you're somewhere in that dark cycle right now — the shame, the late-night searches, the fleeting hope on the practice green followed by the course crushing it — I see you. I've been you. For a long time.
There's a path to sanity. Come find yours.
— Nick
It's a golf trip with the boys. The kind you plan for months, the kind where everyone's trash-talking in the group chat for weeks leading up. We're on a beautiful course. The weather is perfect. I've been striping it all day — driver, irons, the whole bag. I'm in my element. And then I miss a green.
No big deal, right? Everyone misses greens.
Except for me, in that moment, standing over a simple chip shot from just off the fringe, forty feet from the pin, plenty of green to work with, something happens that I can't explain and can't stop. As I take the club back, a fraction of a second before the downswing begins, my body is hijacked. There's no other word for it. Like an alien takes over. I feel nothing in my hands. My wrists fire violently, involuntarily — a full-body twitch that I had no hand in — and the club buries itself into the ground a foot behind the ball. The ball moves maybe three inches.
My buddies say nothing. That's almost worse.
I reset. Deep breath. Pre-shot routine. Visualize. Step in relaxed. Same thing happens.
I pick up the ball, mark a big X on the scorecard, and we move on. Nobody says a word. We've all quietly agreed that this is just the thing we don't talk about.
If you've found this page, you know exactly what I'm describing. You've probably lived some version of this story yourself. And if you have, I want you to know something before you read another word:
You are not weak. You are not alone. And there is a path out.
I'm Nick. I've had the chipping yips for over 25 years. And I'm writing this blog because I've finally — finally — found my way to the other side. Not a cure. Not a magic tip. Not a quick fix. Something better: a real, hard-won, deeply personal process. And I'm here to share every piece of it with you, because I know how terrible this feels. Nobody should have to go through it alone.
How It Started: The Game That Was Supposed to Be Everything
I grew up in the Tiger era. If you know, you know. When Tiger was dismantling fields and rewriting what was possible, golf wasn't just a hobby, it was an identity, a calling, a future. I bought in completely.
By the time I was a teenager, I was near scratch after just three years of serious play. Captain of my high school golf team. I hit the ball a long way with a smooth, buttery tempo. The swing came naturally to me. I was one of those kids people watched on the range.
But here's the thing about golf: the game has a way of finding your weakness and making it the whole story.
My junior golf playing partner at the local muni was a good golfer, but smaller and shorter off the tee. I'd routinely outdrive him by 50 yards. Didn't matter. Like a lot of shorter hitters, he'd developed a magical short game to compensate. He'd get up and down from everywhere. Chip, one putt. Pitch, one putt. Par. Par. Par. Me? I'd nearly drive a green and make bogey. He'd be hitting an 80-yard wedge to 15 feet; I'd miss the same green from 30 yards out. It became a running joke. Nick is green-high in two on a par five but somehow scrambles for bogey. The short guy misses a green and makes par. Again and again.
I laughed it off. But it was already planting something.
My short game was always the weak link. Not yippy, just underdeveloped, a real gap compared to the rest of my game. In competitive junior golf, I was getting up and down maybe half as often as my peers. On good days, I'd shoot a couple over by hitting 12 greens in regulation. On bad days, when I couldn't break 80, it was almost always because I'd missed too many greens and had nothing to fall back on. That cap on my potential gnawed at me. I knew what I could be. And I couldn't get there.
Then came college. I stepped away from serious golf and focused on studies, social life, all the adventures that come with it. But I'd still play the occasional casual round with friends. And that's when I first noticed something was really wrong. Not just weak chipping — wrong. An anxiety I couldn't name. A flinch I couldn't control. I was in shock and disbelief. I still remember my playing partner's jaw dropping the first time it happened, this look of "What the hell was that?" And from then on, standing over a chip shot meant full dread.
At first I tried not to think about it too hard. I wasn't playing seriously anyway. I went to grad school. Moved to New York. Barely touched a club for years.
Then I moved back to California. Good weather, beautiful courses, some money and time to invest in the game. I was ready to fall back in love with golf.
But the yips were waiting for me, patient as ever, like they'd just been sitting in the bag.
The Worst of It
Here's what I need anyone who doesn't have the yips to understand:
This is not a mental weakness. This is not "just nerves." This is a neurological event — a full disconnection between your intention and your body — and it is one of the most disorienting experiences a golfer can have.
At my worst, I could miss the ball entirely.
Not skull it. Not chunk it. Miss it. And this after doing everything right. Hours of technique practice. Pre-shot routines. Deep breathing on the course. Visualization. I'd step into a chip feeling calm, loose, ready. And the moment the downswing began during that split second when the body takes over from the mind, I was gone. Taken over. No feeling in my hands. A violent, uncontrollable twitch. Club hits turf a foot behind the ball.
What followed was its own kind of hell. Skull it across the green. Chunk it back. Skull it again. Pick up. Walk to the next tee. Try not to make eye contact.
I started avoiding rounds with friends. Golf trips, the things I used to look forward to all year, became exercises in quiet survival. I'd yip my way through 18 holes, everyone would politely not mention it, and I'd fly home completely gutted.
Then the cycle would begin. Late-night searching online. Down the rabbit hole. A coach, a program, a tip that seemed promising. Work on it obsessively on the practice green. Feel it click. Arrive at the course with a flicker of hope. Have maybe one okay round, maybe just a less-bad one, and then watch it all fall apart the next time out.
Rinse. Repeat. For years. For decades.
If you're in that cycle right now, I see you. I know exactly where you are.
Everything I Tried (And I Mean Everything)
Over 25 years, I became an accidental expert in chipping yip remedies. Not by choice, by desperation. Here's an honest inventory of the categories I went through. Each of these will get its own deep-dive post eventually, with real talk about what worked, what didn't, and what surprised me. For now, here's the lay of the land.
Technical Coaching and Drills
PGA instructors, in-person and virtual. YouTube rabbit holes. Social media tips. Specific swing paths, wrist positions, impact checkpoints. Cross-handed chipping. I worked with coaches who had completely opposite philosophies. Nothing was clean. Everything was a compromise. But technique matters, and this category taught me a lot about my own tendencies.
Mental and Psychological Work
This is the deep end of the pool. Sports psychologists. Hypnosis (yes, really). EFT tapping, where you literally tap on your head and body while saying mantras out loud. Did all the “therapies”: cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, accelerated resolution therapy, and fear exposure therapy. I worked with LMFT, which involves eye movements. Read countless books on self-esteem, the psychology of sport, Zen and golf. Same problem, wildly different approaches, wildly different results.
Yips-Specific Programs
“Breaking the Yips Cycle” DVDs. Jim Waldron's chipping yips school. All the British guys with their online golf yip programs (not sure why so many of them are British lol). Programs built specifically for people like us. Some of this was genuinely valuable groundwork. None of it, alone, fixed me. Thousands of dollars spent, and zero regrets about trying.
Mental Trickery and Distraction Techniques
Counting out loud during the swing. Looking away from the ball at impact. Tapping rhythms. Humming. Saying silly phrases mid-swing. Various methods designed to short-circuit the part of the brain that fires the yip. Some of these gave me real windows of freedom. None of them held up long-term on their own.
Equipment Experiments
Lead tape to change the swing weight of my clubs. A flexible-shaft wedge. A wrist attachment to keep a flat wrist. New wedges, new grips. Chipping mats and nets. I chased equipment solutions the way a drowning man grabs at anything floating by. Some of it was interesting to try. None of it was the answer.
Pre-Shot Routines
Every variation imaginable. Step-in sequences, trigger words, visualization protocols, breathing patterns. The routine matters, more than most people give it credit for. But only as part of a larger picture. On its own, it's a house of cards.
What Actually Worked (The Honest Answer)
Nothing worked. Everything worked.
I know that sounds maddening. Bear with me.
There is no single tip, coach, program, technique, or piece of equipment that will fix serious chipping yips. I wasted years believing there was, that I was one discovery away from cracking it, that the right instructor or the right mental approach would deliver some "aha" moment and that would be that.
That's not how this works.
What actually works is a devoted, consistent, holistic practice that builds from the inside out. That's harder to hear than "try this grip change," I get it. But it's the truth. It requires real work across multiple dimensions at once: technique, mental game, nervous system, self-image, daily habits, your relationship with failure and pressure. All of it, together.
Read a book on self-esteem? Genuinely helpful, probably a necessary foundation. But self-esteem alone won't fix your yips. Build a daily mindfulness practice? Worth doing, not because meditating cures anything, but because it trains your mind in a way that makes everything else more effective, especially your pre-shot routine when the pressure is real. Learn a technically sound chipping motion? Absolutely critical. But technique without the mental scaffolding collapses every time the stakes get real.
It's additive. It's cumulative. And it's personal. What resonated with me might do nothing for you, and that's okay. That's just how this is. Your job is to find your combination. That's what this whole site is about.
The moment things genuinely started to click for me was when I stopped hunting for the one thing and started building a consistent, whole practice — technique, mindset, routine, mental health work, all of it together, all of it regularly. Not perfectly. With setbacks. But consistently, over time.
Today I play with real confidence. I chip freely, not always, not under every kind of pressure, but enough. Enough to enjoy this game again. Enough to actually be the golfer I always knew I was.
That feeling, after 25 long and painful years, is why I'm sitting here writing this.
Why I'm Doing This
You found this page because you're suffering. I know that. Nobody stumbles onto a site called chippingyips.com by accident.
I'm not a coach. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not selling anything. I'm just a guy who spent 25 years in the trenches and came out the other side, and who genuinely can't stand the thought of other golfers grinding through this alone the way I did. Golf is too great a game for that.
Every post here covers something I tried, in depth and without spin. What I actually did, what helped, what didn't, and what kind of golfer it might click for. Technique. Mental frameworks. The weird stuff. The expensive stuff. The slightly embarrassing stuff. All of it. It will also include real life moments and struggles because I've found that recognizing that other people go through similar struggles is part of the process to overcome them. It'll be in no particular order; I'll just post things that came to mind but I'll aim to cover it all eventually.
This isn't one-size-fits-all advice. Think of it as a menu, a map, a starting point for your own process.
If you're somewhere in that dark cycle right now — the shame, the late-night searches, the fleeting hope on the practice green followed by the course crushing it — I see you. I've been you. For a long time.
There's a path to sanity. Come find yours.
— Nick
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