"It's important for people who think they have a psychological disorder to find out that they don't," says neurologist Charles H. They're gathering knowledge they think could help people improve their performance in a variety of endeavors, from surgery to playing a musical instrument. The doctors say they're not trying to increase the collective comfort level of country club members. One sports columnist gave the study a year-end "Duh!" award. So there was some amusement when word circulated that the Mayo Clinic was doing research on the yips. To many people, though, the problem is simple. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have for five years been studying the yips, hoping to discover whether it has a neurological basis like that of Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. As two neurologists and a sports psychologist watched, he shuffled sideways onto a green carpet, wires streaming behind him, and began to putt.
Soon his head was sprouting wires like Medusa his arms were covered by tiny jumper-cable connections in red, blue, yellow and green, rigged to an EEG to record brain waves and a surface EMG to measure muscle activity in his arms. An electroencephalographic technologist spent more than an hour placing 42 electrodes on his head and arms. So he arrived one recent morning at a branch of the Mayo Clinic here carrying his Odyssey White Hot putter. Last month in Las Vegas, as conventioneers lined up to compete for prizes in a putting contest at the exhibition hall, he slunk away. Now he was starting to play again, but the yips were back. Twenty years ago, Bilton, now a 50-year-old finance executive, quit the game in humiliation.
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