For those of you who have been following along at home with bated breath, you know my story of fighting the wedge yips for the past six and a half years. I recently thought I was well on my way to a resolution following a round of golf with our buddy, Ken. You can read about that here. Well welcome to Wedge Yips Update Part 3.
I was making some pretty good progress, but then a lot of my demons started rearing their ugly heads again and I regressed. Thankfully good friend of the program, Aaron Bucksbaum, hammered some basic technique back into my head and I was able to recover quite a bit. You can read about that here.
S$&@, They’re Back…
Fast forward a few weeks and we’re having all sorts of problems again. As frustrating as it is, I’m able to convince myself it’s ok. Something that has plagued me for almost seven years isn’t going away overnight. But man, it’s like I’ve fully reverted. I played a round with one of my fellow golf associates, Chris, and he saw it firsthand. He just kept saying, “MAN, Bushy, you just can’t stop lifting your head up on that shot! EVERY time!” Yeah, yeah, I know, but that’s not the problem. That’s only part of my problem, it’s all mental…
The truth is, I left the golf course thinking, “what the hell just happened?! I was really feeling good about my wedges progress, but I’m right back where I started!” That same day, a new product showed up for review at my house – Chippo Golf.
Stepping Off the Ledge…
My 3-year-old son was very excited to get Chippo out the next day. Not only was it something to do, but it also served as a great parenting bribe. “If you eat a good lunch, we’ll go set Chippo up, Liam.” So we grab a couple of Liam’s golf clubs, my beloved wedges, and we head outside with Chippo. After setting the boards up a short-ish distance apart, I grabbed my 60º wedge to hit a few shots. Unsurprisingly, disaster ensued. Insult to injury, I heard my wife openly snickering behind me. This was a new low.
Like any golf nerd, I went inside, went down to my office in the basement, and retrieved my old custom Miura 60º wedge (shout out Chip Usher). As I focused on my “new” grip feeling comfortable and the feeling of hitting down on the ball, I heard a voice in my head. “Man, keep your head down, Bushy!” Hmm, that makes some sense, let me try it…
Sure enough, with all three elements combined, I finally made clean and correct contact. Even better, I was able to repeat it. Per the usual with these fixes, I had no touch or shot variety, but I was able to hit some clean wedge shots again! Now I just need to get in ingrained in my head so I can repeat it every time I go out.
Final Thoughts
I don’t exactly feel confident and like I’m super close to being back, but I definitely feel like there’s progress being made and changes are becoming easier to make. I’m still looking for that one thing to mentally click that I can just groove in my brain. Hopefully soon. With the two small thoughts from Ken and Aaron, and the reinforcement of the standard “keep your head down” from Chris, I’m hopeful for the next time I get out.
Good news for the readers too. I texted Chris after sometime on the Chippo and told him that he may have gotten me back on the right track. When I explained how so, he offered his coaching services at a special rate of $12k/hour. He guarantees you his tips about keeping your head down will fix everything wrong with your wedge game. Just contact me and I’ll get it setup if you’re interested.
