The other day while doing research on an article about “the yips,” I happened to watch the replay of the 1970 Open Championship at St. Andrews with Henry Longhurst calling the play-by-play.

This was the tournament in which Doug Sanders missed a short putt on the final hole to win the championship. In his defense, the putt was a downhill left-to-right slider, the most challenging putt for a right-handed player.

David Pelz, NASA scientist turned putting guru, refers to these sidewinders as “facing putts,” meaning that when the player sets up to the ball, they can see the hole in their periapical vision. This is opposed to right-to-left putts, in which the hole is essentially blocked from view by the player’s body.

The tendency with a “facing putt” is for the player to direct the ball at the hole, rather than on a line above the cup, causing the ball to finish on the low side. What happened as Doug Sanders stood over the ball? We’ll come back to that moment shortly. In the meantime, let’s see what events led up to that point.

The Road Hole

The tendency when examining a win or a loss is to focus only on what happened at the end of the contest, ignoring what led up to the penultimate moment. In this case, to put that final putt into its proper context, we need to go back to the 17th tee, which is where Sanders began to unwind.

Sanders and Trevino were playing together in the final group. Trevino had started the day at 8-under par, but he had slipped down the leaderboard to 2-under by the time they’d reached the 17th hole. Sanders was first to play off the 17th tee, but only after a bizarre series of events occurred. As Sanders stood over the ball with the hotel looming to his right, he turned his head back and forth, looking down his target line more than 20 times. Then, when it appeared that he was ready to pull his club away from the ball, he stepped away to wipe the grip of his driver with a towel.

Sanders then returned to the ball and the ritual began again, but this time the number of looks exceeded the first. And finally, when it appeared that he would never hit the ball, he began his swing, hitting the ball weakly down the right side of the fairway. Trevino played his tee shot down the left side, and with that, the two players started walking down the fairway.

Sander’s ball finished a good 20 yards behind Trevino, leaving him a considerable distance away from the green. After talking with his caddie, Sanders chose to play a fairway wood toward the right side of green. Sanders pulled it slightly to the left, and he and his caddie watched as his ball bounded into the left front bunker.

In 1970, the face of the Road Hole Bunker was not as steep as it is today, but it still represented a significant challenge to those who found themselves in it. The pin was tucked just behind the bunker, leaving Sanders only a few feet of green to work with. He dug his feet into the sand and then proceeded to play a brilliant shot, leaving the ball just a few inches away from the hole. He tapped in for a par, preserving his one-shot lead over Nicklaus.

Valley of Sin

On the 18th hole, the two men drove down the left side of the fairway. The pin was located just a few feet behind the “Valley of Sin.” Sanders walked from his ball all the way to the green, and then, taking a long look at the position of the pin, he walked back to his ball. Sanders was the first to play. His wedge shot landed well past the pin, stopping some 25 feet away. Trevino, who at this point nothing to gain or lose, played his wedge shot to roughly 15 feet behind the pin.

After Trevino had played, the two men walked up through the “Valley of Sin” together and made their way toward the back of the green. They each marked their ball and walked forward toward the hole to survey the area around it. The obvious challenge facing Sanders was that he needed to roll the ball to the hole, but at the same time, not run it too far by the cup.

For The Win

Sanders, looking first at the hole and then back again at the ball, proceed to take several glances back and forth before hitting his first putt. It stopped about 2.5 feet from the hole. The championship belonged to Sanders if he could negotiate the next putt. If he were to miss it, he would fall into a tie with Jack Nicklaus, who was already in the clubhouse waiting for him to finish. In the event that the two should tie, it would be broken by an 18-hole playoff the following day.

In preparation to hit what he hoped was his final putt of the tournament, Sanders placed his putter behind the ball. And then, as he had done before, he began to swivel eyes back and forth… to the ball, to the hole, to the ball, to the hole, to the ball, to the hole. And then, perhaps sensing that he had already spent more time than he should over the ball, he appeared to rush the putt once he’d settled over it.

The unthinkable happened.

Sanders missed the putt, letting it slide to the right below the hole. The following day, Nicklaus won the 18-hole playoff, ending Sander’s bid for his first and only major.

Did He Yip It?

And now to the point. Do you think Sanders yipped that final putt? The answer to that question would depend on how you define the yips, so let me help you. There are any number of people who say they have yipped a putt or that they have “the yips.” In fact, they are more likely suffering from poor mechanics that are exacerbated by performance anxiety.

“The True Yips,” as I define the condition, are only present when there is a visible muscular spasm in anticipation of striking the ball. And to the question as to whether Doug Sanders yipped the putt, I’d invite you to watch the replay on the internet. What you will observe as you watch him putt is that there is no visible spasm present at any point in his stroke.

Sanders just made the same mistake as any other golfer might who was playing with his friends on a Saturday morning; he didn’t start the ball on a line high enough above the cup when playing a left-to-right putt.

And so, for the record, Doug Sanders’ miss at the final hole of the 1970 British Open was not a “true yip,” but just a miscalculation of line and speed.

—

Rod Lidenberg is the author of a new book based on this experience treating students with The Yips. The book is entitled “The Yips: Dancing with the Devil, Rewiring Your System for Success.” The book will be released for publication sometime before the end of the year.