With the whole Justin Tucker and the yips story making the rounds, it reminded me of when I took Buzzy to be seen by a young doctor at the Shah building. (For those of you not up to speed on the Tucker-yips matter (click here.) Note too that the Wiki explanation has already been updated to include the following:
Buzzy was not doing well and since I had recently started up with a new/young General Practioner whom I thought had his act together, I took Buzzy to see him. When the young doctor came into our room where we were waiting he asked my Dad “What is your presenting symptom?” Buzzy answered “I can’t make change anymore.”
The Doc looked at me and said “I have never heard of this symptom. What is he talking about?” I explained to him that Buzzy had a store where he gave folks back change when they purchased things and that he was now having trouble doing the math.
I went on to explain that Buzzy was also having some balancing issues causing him to stagger and fall. Turns out that the Doctor found a significant wax buildup in Buzzy’s right ear. The Doc removed the wax and it helped immediately regarding his balancing problems.
As for “the yips”, Buzzy, at the time of his exam was in his early 80’s and had some definite physical issues such as early dementia and very low blood pressure. Throw in a big hiatal hernia and obviously his issues were not necessarily a case of the “yips” per se. He was just plain old and worn out.
But the reason why I thought of him and the yips is because in Buzzy’s mind he had lost the ability to execute a task that he was very skilled at performing. Over the course of 54 years, think how much change he had to have made and given in dealing with his customers. And he did so without having a POS machine that would calculate and state the amount of change to be returned. Obviously him having difficulty in doing so, it bothered him enough to cite it as his presenting symptom. To him, it was a case of having the yips.
As for Tucker and his kicking yips, here is Herm’s suggestion:
Billy Joel too had some takes on it: