I'm sorry it's taken SO long to get back on to this thread. Frankly, the reason I haven't is because I didn't play much disc golf after June 2017. Lots of things going on. I bet I only picked up my discs 5 times between August and December--and I live in Florida where we can play year round. I kind of just put the discs down. Took a break.
Well, I picked them back up in January. And I was practicing pretty well. Then I played in a tourney in February and the yips came right back. During that time that I wasn't playing I did learn that what I've acquired is very much like what Steve Sax or Charlie Knoblacuh or Steve Blass got in baseball. Sax overcame them--the other two did not. And it seems in every sport out there that pro athletes have had this condition--once again some recovering, and others not. In non-sports, I think it's very much like public speaking--a person can deliver a presentation in an empty room with no problem. You put the person in front of 100 people and the words don't come out.
As I described in my original post, it feels like the disc isn't going to leave my hand. Like as soon as I touch the disc, the hand feels glued to the plastic. In addition, when I try to visualize the shot I want to throw, my mind imagines my wrist turning over as if I'm trying to throw some short little cut roller or something. And for the life of me I CANNOT get my mind to imagine the disc coming out correctly--flat and straight.
None of this happens in practice. In fact, the only thing that keeps me loving disc golf is that I enjoy going out to the field and throwing--working on my upshots, etc. And none of these yips happen when I practice--I lace everything. But as soon as I'm around a group to play and the strokes matter, the nerves come back--but not all the time. I've had some nice rounds in club play recently. But then this past Sunday the discs were going all over the place. The rest of my group was like, "Dude, what are you doing?"
Maybe another important point: My putting is NEVER affected by this. I can be spraying shots all over the place but my putting continues to be solid--MUCH better than the average Advanced player.
Another thing I've noticed now that I played in a tournament again, the nervousness I get before playing now manifests itself differently than what it did a few years ago when I was playing well all the time. Back then, I would get a nervous stomach about a half hour before. Just before tee-off I would take a #2 in the bathroom and the nerves would pretty much go away.
Now, I NEVER get the nervous stomach. Nothing. Instead, those nerves have moved from my midsection to my arm and grip--of course based in my mind. They've collected in a different part of my body. That is a MAJOR difference from a few years ago and I didn't notice that until last month. Why the change? No idea.
The question is this: How do I generate stress in my practicing that can replicate what I feel in tourneys so that I can figure out a way to fight through my nerves? I know, rationally, that there is NO WAY my grip is strong enough to hang on to a disc. But that feeling dominates my thought process during a tourney. How do I generate the grip feeling in practice so I can teach myself to overcome it?
I think if I can feel that horrible feeling in practice all the time, that I can overcome it and eventually make it go away.