Do you put a lot of pressure on yourself to play well?

[Mhinderaker]

For me, I think this is a large part of why I play better with strangers.

I don't put pressure on myself to shoot my carreer round because in all likelihood I'll never play with the guys again and I don't really care what they think of my golf game.

Case in point, I shot 11 over for 9 with the worst ball striking day of my life on tuesday, and yet yesterday I went out and shot 38 on the same 9 including a tap-in birdie on a 460 yard par 4.

I guess that's just life.

[sonicblue]

I used to be a REAL nut when it came to pressuring myself, beating myself up, etc.... I like to think I still have high expectations for myself, but golf doesn't allow you to beat yourself up. It just doesn't work (well, I suppose for the truly gifted, it may). I try to put pressure on myself to just hit good shots. I'm at the point where I should be capable of eliminating the truly bad shots, minimizing the poor shots and hitting a handful of very good shots.

Beyond that, I realize I'm still at a point where my score can get unhinged every now and then, without my really falling apart. It's just the level I'm at. Right now, though, I couch it as, I expect myself to break 90 pretty much any time I play (unless I have no local knowledge of a course) and I'd like to at least threaten 80 if it's a familiar course.

[Ben]

I don't put pressure on myself when I play. Well, I do on my putts every now and then, but I suppose that's why I tend to miss those putts. To play good golf you need to be thinking positive with everything. Get a good idea of the shot you want to hit, and try to execute. Pressure sounds like self-inflicted negativity. Golf is a fun game, you should play it as such.