I've got quite a lot of sympathy for that. I'm sure everyone has at one time or other had the chip yips (is that a word?). Well I have, anyway. Each time you thin it, or duff it, you have less confidence, and the less confidence you have the more you thin it, or duff it, until you're stuck in chipping hell, where you feel like your playing partners are rolling their eyes and looking at their watches, and the green is the size of your kitchen table and just as likely to hold.
Yep, been there.
So this bloke then - let's call him Stanley - his chip yips mean that his handicap is in the high twenties, when, according to the rest of his game, you'd expect him to be more like in the mid-teens.
So far, so the ordinary story of any golfer. The point that makes this chap's chip yips worth commenting on is not that he's famous throughout the club for being 'most likely to take 6 to get on the green from 6 feet'. It's that he's really quite uncomfortable with his level of golf. He's basically embarrassed that his handicap is in the high 20s. It doesn't help that his girlfriend has a lower handicap. He's one of those people who has never been bad at any sport. He has played at County level for some sports, and ball-and-bat sports in particular were where he excelled. He's one of those annoying people who's a sport natural.
... except in golf.
The problem, then, is that he thinks he ought to be good at golf without really trying, in the same way as he is good at other sports just by turning up.
Chipping Stanley won't have a lesson. That's not unusual in itself - plenty of people get all mystical about the technicalities of their swings but decline the advice of a professional. But Chipping Stanley also won't practice chipping. I've occasionally seen him at the putting green before a game, but he never, ever, goes to the chipping green. He makes all sorts of excuses, professing that practicing doesn't make any difference anyway, and besides the grass around the chipping green is too long, and the green itself has different run from the real greens on the course and blah blah blah.
So this is where I run out of sympathy for him. He has never really tried to fix his chipping.
I don't think people ought to practice. God knows I don't very much. I also don't think that everyone should have lessons. Some people are natural talents, and for others it's just not important. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who sulks when his girlfriend gets cut another two shots, who is embarrassed about his handicap, but isn't prepared to invest 10 or 15 minutes on the chipping green.
I feel his pain but it's entirely self-inflicted.
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