Mayo Clinic Researchers Uncover Methods to Quantify the Yips and Golfer’s Cramp

Almost every golfer knows the feeling. Minutes after a picture-perfect drive down the fairway, a cascade of inexplicable missed putts leads to a disappointing triple bogey. Golfers’ lapses in play sometimes are blamed on a mysterious twitching condition called “the yips.” But are yips physical or psychological? In a new Mayo Clinic study, published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers combined multiple methods to quantify golfers’ yips and identify those with a neurological cause.