ONE MINUTE US golfer Mark O'Meara was one of the best putters in the world; the next he was someone who could not buy a three-foot putt.

Don’t worry, you haven't strayed onto a golf website. This is afl.com.au and we'll get to football matters shortly.

But O'Meara's story is a good example of how strongly yips can take hold of a golfer. These days, the term ‘yips’ is used to cover all forms of vices on the greens but, essentially, the afflicted golfer cannot make a smooth stroke, either flinching before contact or jerking the putter as he swings through.

The condition has spawned a plethora of clinical studies - mostly in the US - that throw up some interesting findings on the yips' causes and possible cures.

These may or may not explain why players such as Matthew Richardson, Travis Cloke, Nick Riewoldt and, more recently, Lindsay Thomas have, at times, been gripped by football's equivalent of the yips in front of goal.

But, at the very least, they provide food for thought. After all, standing over a putt and lining up for goal are similar challenges. In both situations, you're preparing to execute a basic skill you've practised thousands and thousands of times. And, in both situations, you've got time to think, time to let doubts creep into your mind.

Let's get back to O'Meara. By the late 1990s, he had been a professional golfer for nearly 20 years. In that time, he had built a reputation as one of the steadiest players from tee to green and one of the purest, most reliable, putters.

In 1998, at the age of 41, O'Meara won two of that year's four major championships, the US Masters and the British Open. Just a few years later, however, he was so badly afflicted by yips, he was little better than an even-money bet when he stood over a short putt.

How could someone who had, at times, seemed on auto-pilot draining putt after putt on some of golf's biggest, and most stifling, stages be reduced to this?       

Where do we start? The number of world-leading scientific institutes that have devoted their time and resources to better understanding what is ultimately a mere sporting affliction is staggering. The US's renowned Mayo Clinic alone has performed a series of studies.

The subjects in such tests have often been subjected to ECGs (measuring their heart rates), GFs (grip force), EMEGs (muscle activation patterns) and EEGs (brainwave muscle activation patterns).

And the scholars reporting on the results of these tests use terms like the septo-hippocampal and amygdala systems, and focal dystonia.

Let's see if we can make things a bit simpler.

For all these fancy scientific terms, there are also essentially two schools of thought on yips.

The first, and traditional, explanation is that they're all in your head. That is, the anxiety brought on by a short putt destroys your stroke. The proponents of this theory recommended visualisation and relaxation techniques to sufferers.

However, in the past decade, institutes like the Mayo Clinic have challenged this take on yips, saying the condition is a neuromuscular one. In other words, an involuntary contraction of the muscles, rather than a lack of nerve under pressure, is to blame.

O'Meara's long-time coach Hank Haney is in this latter camp. Haney helped O'Meara overcome his yips by convincing him to abandon his traditional putting grip in favour of the 'saw' grip (a variation of the 'claw' group, in which, for a right-hander, the fingers of the right hand sit on top of the putter grip, rather than gripping its underside).

Haney believed a physical change was needed to solve O'Meara's problems. In simple scientific terms, he needed a circuit-breaker to change the messages that were being sent to his brain when he putted. This new neurological input helped O'Meara rediscover his smooth putting stroke.

Shortly afterwards, he won his first tournament in five years, the 2004 Dubai Desert Classic. Later, O'Meara said: "All of a sudden I started rolling the ball better. I was alive again. I felt like I could make a putt."

Which brings us back to football. Let's take North Melbourne's Thomas as an example of a goalkicking 'yipper'. First, because he's been the syndrome's most recent victim - he's kicked 17.29 and put another 10 shots out of bounds on the full this season. And, second, because he's been recalled to North's team to take on Hawthorn this Sunday, following a three-week spell in the VFL that was prescribed specifically for him to address his goalkicking issues.

AFL Victoria high performance manager Anton Grbac lends some support to the notion that physical adjustments can help alleviate yips in footballers as well as golfers.

Grbac worked at Port Adelaide as a kicking consultant from 2005-08, working particularly closely with forwards such as Warren Tredrea, Daniel Motlop, Brett Ebert and Justin Westhoff.

Although Grbac said Port's primary philosophy had been to ensure players did not overanalyse a bout of goalkicking inaccuracy, the coaching staff also got them to make adjustments to their goalkicking routine and, in some cases, minor adjustments to their kicking techniques.

"The biggest thing is to ensure the mind does not take over a process that should be automatic," Grbac said.

"What we tried was to avoid a situation where the club or player talked so much about the problem, because it can rub off on the player to the point they think there's a massive problem.

"We try to manage that by not creating a crisis that becomes self-fulling."

To that end, the Power would often get someone struggling in front of goal not to do any goalkicking practice for a while, Grbac said. In that way, they could take their mind off the problem and tackle it again when they were mentally refreshed.

But when those players resumed goalkicking practice, Grbac said he worked with them to refine their goalkicking routine, giving them the freedom to find out what worked best for them by trial and error.

Then, on game day, Grbac said the player would be given one cue from that routine to focus on, in order to keep his thoughts simple and allow his kicking to flow automatically. 

"We didn't want to distract them from their task, but to trust their routine and mentally let go," Grbac said.

"Sometimes the mind has to be distracted. By getting it to focus on that one part of your routine, you can distract it from reacting like it normally does."

Grbac said Port's forwards were trained to be aware of each other's idiosyncrasies and to remind each other of the cues they needed to focus on when kicking for goal in matches. For instance, Motlop would often do this for Ebert.

"It worked a fair bit when Daniel Motlop would go to 'Ebo' after he taken a mark and give him a cue because sometimes the player, himself, can become too emotionally involved in the shot and get distracted from what they're meant to be doing," Grbac said. 

Although Grbac was very reluctant to meddle with a player's kicking technique, he said he might make a minor adjustment if he felt it would act as a "circuit-breaker" that cleared the player's mind of negative thoughts under pressure.

On the other hand, former Richmond spearhead Richardson's thinking on the matter is more old school. He says goalkicking is predominantly in a player's head.

"If you're thinking negatively as you're walking in to kick that's probably dictates what the result's going to be," Richardson said.

"And if you miss your first two shots at goal, players that could control their mind and stop negative thoughts from creeping in have a much better chance of turning things around."

But Richardson agreed with Grbac that finding and sticking to a set-shot routine you were comfortable with gave you the best chance of converting your shots at goal.

"But it's easier said than done. Some guys can do it and some guys can't. And I think at the end of the day most of it's in your head," he said.

"And I never really mastered it."

Ironically, though, Thomas' lowest moment this year should also give him hope that his improved accuracy in the VFL - he kicked 9.3 for North Ballarat in windy conditions last Saturday at Ballarat's Eureka Stadium - will stand up under the heightened pressure of the AFL.

Midway through the third quarter of North's 117-point loss to Collingwood in round 16, Thomas missed a goal from 15m out almost directly in front. It was the final straw that convinced North coach Brad Scott that Thomas needed to address his yips away from the AFL spotlight.

Shortly afterwards the Magpies took the ball into their forward line, where Cloke, who once struggled in front of goal to the extent Thomas has done this year, threaded a shot from 40m out near the boundary line.

If nothing else it proved that - contrary to old golfing lore - yips do not come with a life sentence.

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.