Antedating "the yips" OED 1963-->1943 :: Fwd: "yips" - Word of the Day from the OED

[Garson O'Toole]

Here is a cite a couple years earlier written by the same sports
columnist. Once again the golfer Tommy Armour is featured. The
journalist, Grantland Rice, has placed the term yips within quotes:

Cite: 1936 January 14, The (Baltimore) Sun, "Hagen Predicts Faster
Golf This Year Than Ever Before" by Grantland Rice, Page 11, Column 7,
Baltimore, Maryland. (ProQuest)

                      "Yips" Got Him

It was Tommy Armour who said that golf would be the greatest
competition in the world - the finest of all sporting tests - if it
wasn't for putting.

"When those nerves in the wrists begin to hop," Armour said, "there is
nothing to be done about it not even by a Hagen or a Jones, a Vardon
or anyone else. When the 'yips' set in you are gone. Bobby Jones never
knew what the 'yips' were until his Augusta tournaments and then he
told me he would just as soon be nicked by a rattlesnake."

Garson

Garson O'Toole wrote
> Thanks for posting about this interesting word-of-the-day, Victor.
> Based on the great cites that you found I formulated a query and was
> able to push the date back a bit further. In the 1938 newspaper
> article below the professional golfer Tommy Armour is interviewed and
...
Victor Steinbok  wrote ...
>> http://bit.ly/96LwrS
>> The Nation's Business. Vol. 35. 1947
...
>> Then, there is the following--and it's not even from any golf context!
>> http://bit.ly/b3Yaoh
>> Timothy Fuller. This is Murder, Mr. Jones. 1943 [WorldCat gives a
>> somewhat ambiguous pub. date of 1945 with copyright of 1943, but both
>> Harvard and BPL have copies (offsite) and both catalogues list it as 1943.]
>> p. 82

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