“I don’t really know where to start,” LPGA star Ingrid Lindblad wrote on Instagram after playing recently in the HSBC Women’s World Championship, where she shot 24 over par, including a third-round 82, and finished last.
“The golf this week makes me feel empty. I have been struggling off the tee for a little while but this was on a new level. Doubting myself on every tee shot is exhausting and not knowing where the ball will fly makes me fill up with panic. After Saturday’s round, I didn’t want to play on Sunday, because why would I? There’s been a lot of tears but I’m proud of myself showing up to the course for the last round. I’m thankful to have people around me who care about me as a person and don’t see me as less based on my scores.”
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Reading Lindblad’s raw post was heartbreaking and a painful reminder of how cruel and confounding this game can feel. Because how can you win 15 times in college, set amateur scoring records at the U.S. Women’s Open, win on the LPGA Tour in your third start during your rookie season, and suddenly have no idea where the ball is going to go when you tee it up?
There are names for what Lindblad is describing, the most unpopular of which would be the driver yips. It doesn’t really matter what we call it. It’s debilitating. Lindblad hit three fairways on Saturday at the HSBC. Over the course of the season, she’s ranked 129th in accuracy on the LPGA Tour, hitting 49 percent of the fairways.
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No one wants to see a player struggle like this. Especially one as young as Lindblad. But the 25-year-old Swede isn’t the first pro and won’t be the last to go through it. And in that, there is hope.
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Renowned instructor David Leadbetter doesn’t work with Lindblad, but he has seen this sort of situation before with other players. He says there are questions that need to be asked to be able to diagnose the problem: Has this happened to her in the past? Has she made a slight swing change? Has she had any physical injuries?
“A lot of times these things can start off technical and then become mental,” Leadbetter explains.
A small swing change can lead to wayward shots, which lead to self-doubt and confusion. And injury can make a player adjust their swing in small ways, which can produce errant tee balls. Hit enough of them and confidence is lost. Which only leads to more missed fairways.
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David Leadbetter has worked with many high-profile players on both the LPGA and PGA Tours. Michelle Wie West, pictured here, was one of his star pupils.
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Stuart Franklin
“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you feel like you’re standing over the ball and you have no clue where it’s gonna go,” Leadbetter says. “You sort of have these pictures in your mind of a disaster when you’re standing over the ball. You’ve got all this noise going through your head. It’s not an easy thing to get out of.”
Leadbetter says someone can have the driver yips and not have it in any other part of their game because the driver swing is so different from the irons. You’re hitting up on the driver and down on the irons. It’s a different motion, which is why someone with driver issues can still hit great irons.
“You don’t know what’s going on inside somebody’s head, but you can guarantee the picture is not good, and there’s probably an awful lot of tension there where they’re not releasing,” Leadbetter explains.
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He looked at Lindblad’s swing on YouTube, comparing some of her college wins to these more recent LPGA tournaments where she’s struggled with the driver. “It didn’t look a whole lot different,” Leadbetter said.
That is perhaps one of the most confounding and distressing aspects of the yips. When the ball is going out of bounds right on one hole and 20 yards left on the next, you’d hope you’d be able to look at the swing and see some obvious marker of a technical issue that can be adjusted. But that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening with Lindblad.
“If she’s blowing it 30 yards right, you feel like you can’t release the club, or if you do release the club, then you snap hook it,” Leadbetter says. “So now you become, you’re petrified and you don’t swing with any sort of freedom.”
That freedom is harder to see on camera. It lives in the minutiae of movement. And it can only be achieved when the mind is free of the fear that the yips create. When someone comes to Leadbetter with a problem like the driver yips, his goal is to get the player moving like themselves again. He wants to get the mind out of its overactive, negative state so that the player can instead live in their body free of tension. And let the body move the way it knows how to move.
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“If I was recommending anything, some of it has definitely got to do with your routine,” Leadbetter said.
If someone’s playing well, their routine generally takes the same amount of time, Leabdetter says. “It’s constant, that’s part of their swing. And normally speaking, that tends to change when people are uncertain or unsure, or feel they’re going to hit a bad shot. They might have three looks instead of two, or they might stand over the ball just a couple of seconds longer. During that period of time, tension’s probably being built up. You’ve got this bad mental picture: OK, don’t go right, don’t go left. You see everything but the shot that you want to hit when you’re free and you’re just letting it go.”
Leadbetter has noticed players with driver issues stand over the ball and hold their breath. This also creates tension which builds up in the hands, through the arms, into the shoulders. Any hopes of being able to swing freely are gone when you’re feeling that tense.
To recreate that flow, Leadbetter has a trick that he’s used in the past. He’d have players hit drivers on the range with their eyes closed.
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“When you close your eyes, you’ve got a feel for your swing. When you’re glaring at that golf ball and that golf ball means so much, where it ends up, it becomes a real mental issue,” Leadbetter says.
Taking the ball out of the player’s view takes some of the stress away. Without the ball in front of them, the player is less likely to visualize all of the bad places the ball can end up.
It takes a few swings, but Leadbetter says pros start making solid contact pretty quickly when they do this drill.
“Hitting balls with your eyes closed is an amazing therapy for this sort of issue,” he says.
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Once the player has that natural flow instilled in their swing by hitting balls with their eyes closed, Leadbetter has them go back to the course. Before they hit a tee ball, he has them take a practice swing with their eyes closed, to repeat those good motions they’ve been making on the range. When they actually hit the ball on-course, they do it with their eyes open.
Another drill Leadbetter has seen success with is teeing up a line of six to eight balls, and having the player hit one, step in to the next, take one look at the target, hit. Step into the next ball, look at the target, hit. All the way through the line. “You don’t have time to think,” Leadbetter says.
While doing these drills, Leadbetter has seen players hit great drives. Seeing that visual of the ball sailing straight towards the intended target is key to rebuilding confidence. Hitting bad drives derails players’ confidence. They know that they’re capable of hitting it way off target. But after spending time on the range doing drills that create good drives, they know that they’re capable of hitting it in the fairway. Confidence begins to creep back in. The player’s instincts start to take over. The swing moves freely.
“As a player, you’re searching, you’re looking, and sometimes the cure is actually a little radical, hitting balls with your eyes closed, for instance, or whacking 10 balls in a row without even worrying about your alignment. You’ve got to bring the freedom back,” Leadbetter says.
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Lindblad has a difficult task before her. But perhaps her ability to write about it candidly on social media shows that she is honest with herself about what is happening and ready to try whatever it takes to feel confident with her driver again. She’s not hiding from it or pretending that it isn’t happening. Right now, she is playing while shouldering much doubt and fear. How unfair, for someone with such ability, to feel that way on the golf course. But beyond this heartbreak, there is hope. This has been conquered.
“She can get it back,” Leadbetter says with confidence.
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