Never playing your best when you really wannna beat someone specific?

Stop choking........LOL    Congrats on beating your friend though.........

My dad is like this...  he's a much better golfer than when he plays with me.   When we play together, I bring out the worst in him.  He wants to impress me so bad, that the pressure gets to him and it effects his play.

I focus so hard on beating my dad when we play golf. My dad was a star athlete in high school and has pretty much beaten me in everything. You name it.. tennis, football, hockey, etc. Golf has seemingly become my dominant sport between the two of us, but I still manage to choke when I play with him. My putting and chipping game becomes absolute garbage that is for sure.

Don't lose hope.  Things can change drastically over the course of a year.

A buddy and I play 15-16 times a year.  I am probably a bit steadier overall but otherwise we are well matched.  When we play together we bet $1/$1/$1 in match play for front/back/total.  My friend likes to keep a running total on our $3 bets.  When we started this in 2011, I was down close to $35 by the time September rolled around.  It didn't matter that I usually had a lower score, he just had a knack of winning one more hole on each nine.  I finally rallied a bit in Autumn and going into 2012 I was only down by about $25.  Then 2012 went my way and he never won a match.  I erased the deficit and built a surplus.  By 2013 he was so thoroughly beaten down he refused to play our bet most times and when he did, I still thumped him.  Crushed him again in our first outing of 2014.

I was the buddy for so many years with a best friend. He'd play with other friends and shoot lights out...it didn't matter what he shot when we played I always beat him...he'd usually end up choking, lol....It was kinda fun.

I don't know about the putting and chips, but I know that when I used to play with friends who i really wanted to beat, and who I was much better than, I would always play my worst because I was constantly over swinging and trying to impress them.

You know, I had kind of the opposite of this happen last week and it was pretty funny.  I got paired with a few randoms at the beginning of the round and tied one guy on the first hole while beating the other 2, beat all 3 on the second hole with a 12 foot par saving putt.  On the third hole I was the only one to land my drive on the green and went on to tie a guy who made a completely lucky par saving putt.  On the fourth hole it got reeeeeeal quiet and I could tell they were a little bit intimidated.  Yeah we were all hackers but it was clear I had a little bit more control of my hacker-ness than they did and they knew it, but at the same time they didn't want to lose and/or embarrass themselves.  So the more they tried to "focus" the worse they seemed to do.  I, on the other hand, just kept playing my normal game and continued to tie or beat them.

It reminded me of rounds I played last year where I was paired with people who were obviously better than me and how I wanted to match their shots, especially on holes that I thought were within my ability to do so.  It was nerve wracking thinking I had to hit my best shot just to match something that these guys made look easy, and in the end it probably made me play worse.  Anyway, I was getting a little bit of that vibe from these people I was paired with last week and honestly... it was pretty rad.  lol  I think it gave me a little bit of an idea how intimidating it could be to play a round with someone like Woods or Mickelson even as a fellow tour player.