Like any good ~7 year battle with the yips, the saga continues.  If you recall, I’ve had three “breakthroughs” this golf season that have given me slight glimmers of hope for the future.  To recap, first was Ken’s “weakened grip” approach.  This helped for a good month, but the chyips (chipping yips, doi) returned.  Next came Aaron’s berating to hit down on the ball with a stance tip from my old coach.  When we last left off, I told you about how the yips came back hard and my buddy Chris kept telling me how bad I was “lifting my head” with my wedge shots.  Well, after making some progress with that tip and the old Chippo, I still felt like I was slipping right back into trouble.  Thankfully, my pal, Kyle, reminded me of an old friend – piggly wiggly.  Welcome to Bill’s Wedge Yips Update 4!

Meet Piggly Wiggly

What, or who, in the world is piggly wiggly, you ask?  Piggly wiggly is actually a grip “technique” I learned a long time ago from my friend, Kyle, at Club Champion.  Kyle did not invent it, but he passed it onto me years ago.  In short, the idea is that you curl the index finger of your bottom hand over the top of the club.  This modified grip will help you take your hands and wrists out of your wedge shot.  It feels really weird, but I’ve had some slight success in the past so I may as well revisit it.

A Quick Trip to Club Champion

I stopped in at my local Club Champion late on a Friday to say hi to Kyle and have general golf nerd conversations.  One of which included checking out some of the sick new gear Kyle has in his bags – as always.  This time around, Kyle had a new wedge that caught my attention.  Man, I probably hit a dozen beautiful nippers with this thing to start.  We’re talking perfect wedge shots and me being ready to tell Kyle to name his price.  Don’t worry though, the usual wedge woes started creeping in.  Kyle was pleased/entertained to see nothing’s changed in the past couple of years…

So after discussing my ongoing wedge yips saga, I told Kyle that I’m going to try bringing piggly wiggly back.  What do I have to lose?  Once we had a good laugh about it, I hit a few more balls with the piggly wiggly grip.  Of course, they were near perfect again for about a dozen shots.  Kyle proceeded to make fun of me that I was going to have to play piggly wiggly permanently with my wedges, but we both agreed “hey, whatever works…”  Don’t worry, even with piggly wiggly, the success was short lived.

Kyle’s “Discovery”

Within about three swings with my true yips colors shining through, Kyle casually mentions “yeah, stop transferring all of your weight to your right foot – stay on the ball of your left foot” and walks away.  Hmm.  So I try that out…and sure enough, we’re back on track.  It seemed like as long as I stayed on the ball of my left foot and used piggly wiggly, I could hit any wedge shot I wanted.  Admittedly, there were still plenty of bad ones, but every miss came back to the same thing.  All of my weight leaning back on my right foot.

While this discovery of Kyle’s wasn’t a wild concept, there was something about it that felt like I was unlocking something revolutionary.  At least, as far as I was concerned.  Very similar to when Ken got me on the weaker grip kick.  It was an easy thing for me to focus on and made a huge difference.

Grooving the Changes

Having been down this road plenty of times before, I knew I had to get these “feels” grooved in.  On this journey this season, that’s been the most noticeable thing.  I just can’t find the muscle memory to keep any of these “fixes” consistent and reflexive.  So I did what any lunatic would do.  I parked my car in the driveway and setup a net in my garage with a mat, and a bunch of foam balls.  Every night after the kids go to bed, I wander out with my sand and lob wedges to hit a minimum of 100 balls.  I do sets of 10 with each club and have to hit the ball again if I make bad contact.  Pretty simple.

So far, I can tell it’s helped.  I’m not perfect, but I’m finding repeatable feels and making adjustments to get more comfortable with these basic concepts again.  So much so, I’ve even been able to stop with the piggly wiggly grip!  In the beginning, I was just focusing on good contact with the ball in the three main areas of my stance.  As I’ve continued, I try to envision different shots I’ve thinned or chunked with my wedges before and hit “that shot” into my net.  I also try to imagine different shots I could encounter at different courses and how I’d hit into those positions.  Though it may not seem like it, this feels like a monumental step for me!

Final Thoughts

I’d be lying to you if I told you that I feel confident at this point, but these latest additions are giving me the ability to actually feel what I’m doing wrong when I hit it bad.  That’s a big leap when you’ve simply just felt everything was wrong for the past 7 years.  Now let’s just see if I can get some of this stuff to stick around for a bit!  In the meantime, I’ll be grind away in the garage trying to build that muscle memory.