What are they?We could find no better definition of the yips than the one provided some years ago by British sports writer Robert Philip who described them as "that accursed affliction that makes great golfers send a three-footer racing past the hole like a meteor and into a bunker on the opposite side of the green".

More scientifically they are involuntary spasms in the hands and forearms as a golfer prepares to take a putt (they can also strike when chipping or swinging).

If you suffer from the yips (and they say a quarter of regular golfers do) you’re in good company – some of the game’s greats, including Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer (right), have been similarly afflicted. “I’ve gotten rid of the yips four times but they just hang on in there. You know those breaking two-foot downhill putts? I’d rather face a rattlesnake,” said the late Snead, while Langer described the plague thus: “It’s like someone else has taken over.”

Origin: They have also been described as "the flinches", "the jumps", "whiskey fingers" and "the jitters", but Scottish-born professional Tommy Armour (1894-1968) is credited with coming up with the term in the 1960s. "The yips are that ghastly time when, with the first movement of the putter, the golfer blacks out, loses sight of the ball and hasn't the remotest idea what to do with the putter or, occasionally, if he is even holding a putter at all," as he described them.