In some ancient cultures it was forbidden to speak aloud the name of a deity or a devil out of concern that merely speaking the name could conjure up the spirit who would then wreak havoc on the affairs of men. In our modern post-enlightenment world such behavior is treated as silly superstition although it still begs the question of why did such practices persist for thousands of years if there were never any bad consequences?
In my regular foursome we respect the wisdom of the ancient elders and it is forbidden to ever speak aloud the word "sha_k" out of fear that dark demonic forces will appear and start bouncing your golf ball off the hosel of your clubs. I cannot be held responsible for the fate of any golfer who is foolish enough to challenge this hypothesis.
An almost equally feared word which I do dare here to speak is Yips. Golfers over 50 years old will remember the golf superstar of the mid to late seventies whose iron play was so precise that he used to get the yardage from his caddie in half-yard increments. For reasons unknown to mortal man however his putting game almost completely disappeared. Amazingly, and probably because his iron play was so good he was still able to win major tournaments while sometimes putting with his eyes closed,
Was that a case of the Yips? We do not know. Everybody yanks a short putt from time to time.
What we do know about the Yips is that it is a real muscular condition that occurs in about 1 in every 1,000 people from time to time. The condition is actually better-known as musicians dystonia, which is an involuntary muscle contraction or muscle spasm that occurs most often in musicians who have practiced complicated finger movements for years. These spasms are almost always painless and usually imperceptible.
If you are a golfer and you think that you may have the Yips do not, I repeat do not, start reading the medical literature about musicians dystonia because it will scare the bejeesus out of you. You will start seeing terms like basal ganglia, motor cortical activity, diffusion sensor imaging, and sensorimotor cortex and see something overwhelming you as sinister as the creature of the black lagoon.
What you think about as the Yips may be the result of spending too much time over-thinking a very simple process, moving a golf club head a few inches to hit a stationary round ball. Scratch golfers prevent the demons from controlling their golf clubs by first not speaking their names and by establishing a pre-shot routine that has you striking the ball in less than eight seconds from start to finish.
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