How to Get Rid of the Yips: A Step-by-Step Wedge Drill
Few words in golf carry as much dread as "the yips." A shot that should take no thought at all, a short wedge, a routine chip, suddenly turns into a jerky, involuntary flinch. The club stabs at the ball instead of swinging through it, and the harder a golfer tries to control it, the worse it usually gets.
If you've felt that loss of control over a simple shot, you already know it has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with what's happening in your hands, wrists, and nervous system in the moment before impact.
I'm Michael LaBella, a performance golf coach at MLaB Golf, based at Butler Country Club. In my experience working with golfers who fight the yips, the fix isn't a mechanical swing change. It's a process that rebuilds softness, rhythm, and trust in the hands, one small step at a time. Below is the wedge drill I use to start that process, built from the ground up so a golfer can feel the difference rather than just hear about it.
Key Takeaways
What the yips are: An involuntary jerk or flinch through impact, often on short, low-pressure shots like chips and short wedges.
What drives them: Tension in the hands, wrists, and forearms, tied to a neurological response rather than a technical swing fault.
The fix: A progressive wedge drill built on gravity, softness, and rhythm, not added mechanics.
The goal shot: A high, soft wedge shot with little roll, hit with a relaxed grip and free-flowing tempo.
The timeline: Real, lasting change takes repetition. This is one of the harder parts of the game to unlearn, and it rarely resolves in one session.
What Are the Yips?
The yips show up as a sudden, involuntary jump, jerk, or stab through a shot, most often on shorter shots where there's little swing to hide behind: chips, short wedges, and putts. A golfer sets up normally, starts the swing, and something takes over that has nothing to do with the shot they intended to hit. The club gets thrown at the ball instead of swung through it.
In my experience, this comes from a neurological connection in the brain that causes a golfer to flinch at the ball rather than swing freely through it. It isn't a conscious decision, and it isn't a lack of skill. That distinction matters, because it changes how you approach fixing it. You're not correcting a swing flaw. You're retraining a reflex.
What Causes the Yips?
Most of what feeds the yips traces back to the hands. Tension builds in the grip, the wrists lock up in anticipation of the shot, and the forearms tighten instead of staying relaxed through the stroke. That tension doesn't stay isolated in the hands. It travels into the arms and the tempo of the swing itself, and it's usually there before a golfer even starts the club back.
A lack of understanding of what's actually happening makes it worse. Golfers who don't recognize that tension and anticipation are driving the miss often try to fix it with more mechanics: a different grip, a steeper swing, a slower takeaway.
Those changes can help at the margins, but they don't address the root of the problem, which is what the hands and wrists are doing, or failing to do, in the moment before the club reaches the ball.
The most important piece is softness and relaxation in the forearms and wrists. Everything else in the fix below builds from that one idea. Because the yips are often influenced by both physical tension and mental anticipation, a Mindset Fitting | MLaB GOLF can complement the technical work described below.
The Fix: A Wedge Drill Built on Softness, Not Mechanics
This is the process I use with golfers working through the yips. It starts with no ball at all, and it adds complexity one layer at a time so the hands can learn to stay soft before there's any pressure to perform. Grab your most lofted wedge and find a spot on the range or practice green where you can work through each step before you ever hit a shot.
Golfers who want individual feedback while learning this progression may find a 60-minute Lesson - Adults | MLaB GOLF helpful for reinforcing these movement patterns.
Step 1: Set Up and Feel Gravity Take the Club Down
Take your normal setup with your most lofted wedge, and keep your chest down over the ball. From there, take the club back a short distance, let it sit at the top for a moment, and then let the arms and club simply drop. Don't guide it down. Don't add any extra motion. Let gravity take it to the ground.
Do this a few times in a row. What you're feeling for is looseness: no tension in the wrists, no tension in the hands, no tension in the forearms. If you notice any grip or bracing as the club drops, stop, shake your hands out, and start again. This step alone, done honestly, teaches your hands what "soft" actually feels like, which is the foundation for everything that follows.
Step 2: Let the Club Swing Through
Once the drop feels loose and repeatable, add the next layer. Let the club drop from gravity as before, but this time let it continue into a small swing through, rather than stopping once it reaches the ground.
Drop, swing through. Repeat that a few times, keeping the same soft hands and wrists from Step 1. You're not adding effort here. You're extending the same relaxed motion a little further.
Step 3: Let the Wrists Get Involved
Next, bring the wrists into the motion more directly. Restart the same drop-and-swing-through pattern, but this time let the wrists hinge and release naturally as the club falls and swings through, rather than staying passive. The key word is still "let." You're not manufacturing wrist action. You're allowing it to happen as a result of the club's own momentum.
Step 4: Add the Chest Turn
This step brings the torso into motion. Count to yourself: one, two, three, four, and on five, rotate your chest through. As the club drops under gravity and the hands fall with it, turn your chest through the shot on that fifth count. Take it back, drop, turn. Do that a few times until the sequence feels connected rather than like three separate movements stitched together.
Step 5: Add the Ball
Once the motion feels smooth without a ball, it's time to hit an actual shot. Stay relaxed, and don't try to hit this very far. A soft shot carrying roughly 10 yards onto the green is the target, not distance or power. Take one more practice swing to confirm the feel, then step up to the ball. Let the club drop, and turn through it, exactly as you practiced in Step 4.
If the drill works the way it's designed to, you should see a shot that flies high and soft, with very little roll once it lands. That ball flight is the signature of a relaxed release rather than a jab or a stab, and it's the clearest sign that the tension you're working to remove has actually let go, at least for that one swing.
What a Successful Rep Looks Like
A high, soft shot with minimal roll tells you the hands stayed quiet and the club released naturally through impact instead of getting manipulated at the last moment. A low, running shot, or a shot that comes out with a jerk or a flinch, tells you tension crept back in somewhere in the sequence. That's useful information, not a failure. It tells you exactly which step to revisit: usually Step 1, since a loose start makes everything after it easier.
Resist the urge to judge each rep by where the ball ends up. In the early stages of this process, the feel matters more than the result. A golfer who hits a mediocre shot with genuinely soft hands is making more progress than one who hits a good shot by muscling through the same old tension.
Why This Takes Time
The yips are one of the harder parts of the game to unwind, and it's worth being honest about that going in. This isn't a one-range-session fix. The neurological pattern behind the flinch built up over time, often through repeated bad experiences on similar shots, and it takes repetition in the other direction to loosen its grip.
Once a golfer starts to understand that tempo, relaxation, and softness in the hands are the actual keys, not a new grip or a steeper angle of attack, real progress becomes possible.
Progress here tends to look like fewer and fewer flinches over weeks of practice, not a single breakthrough session. Stay patient with the process, and keep coming back to the same core feeling: soft hands, gravity doing the work, and rotation added on top of that, not instead of it.
Practicing the Drill on Your Own
Work through Steps 1 through 4 without a ball most times you practice this, even after you've moved on to hitting shots. That no-ball repetition is where the soft, tension-free pattern actually gets reinforced, since there's no result to worry about and no reason for the hands to brace.
When you do add the ball, keep the target modest. A few soft, high wedge shots landing softly onto a nearby green will do more for your yips than a bucket of full-effort shots aimed at a flag.
If you find the flinch creeping back in during a full session, it's a good signal to reset. Go back to Step 1, rebuild the feel of the drop with no ball, and work back up through the progression rather than pushing through more shots while tense. Consistency in how you practice this matters more than volume.
Junior, collegiate, and competitive players can apply these same concepts during a 60-minute Lesson - Junior/College/Pro | MLaB GOLF to build greater consistency under pressure.
Bringing It Back to the Rest of Your Short Game
The softness this drill builds doesn't stay isolated to yip-prone shots. A relaxed grip and a tension-free release through impact are the same qualities that produce better touch on everyday chips, pitches, and bunker shots. Golfers who work through this process often find their overall feel around the greens improves alongside the specific shot they were trying to fix, since both come from the same source: hands that stay soft instead of hands that brace.
At MLaB Golf, Michael LaBella, focuses on helping golfers build a game that holds up under real pressure, not just on the range. Getting the yips under control is as much about trusting your hands again as it is about any single technique, and that trust gets built one soft, honest rep at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What causes the yips in golf?
Tension in the hands, wrists, and forearms is the main driver, tied to a neurological response that causes a golfer to flinch or jab at the ball rather than swing through it. It tends to show up most on short, low-pressure shots like chips and short wedges.
Can the yips be fixed?
Many golfers see real improvement by rebuilding softness and rhythm through a progressive drill rather than changing swing mechanics. It takes repetition and patience, since the pattern behind the yips usually builds up over time.
Why do the chipping yips happen more than full-swing yips?
Shorter shots leave less swing to work with, so any tension in the hands shows up more directly in the strike. There's also less momentum to smooth over a flinch on a short shot than there is on a full swing.
How long does it take to get rid of the yips?
It varies by golfer, and it's rarely a single-session fix. Progress tends to look like fewer flinches over weeks of consistent practice, built on the same core feeling of soft hands and a gravity-driven release.
What's the best drill to fix the yips?
A progressive, no-ball wedge drill that builds from a relaxed gravity drop, to a swing through, to wrist involvement, to a full chest turn, works well because it lets the hands relearn softness one layer at a time before any shot outcome is on the line.
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