Lysti: I don't laugh at or make fun of anyone who plays the game. We're just out here to have fun, and I could care less about the skill level of the person I'm playing with. What people tend to forget is that golf is not a competition of person vs. person. It's about person vs. course. If we play and my score is 8 strokes lower than yours, I didn't beat you...the course did. We may look at the leaderboards and tournament rankings afterward to see who did the best vs. the course, but that doesn't change the fact that the real competition happens between the ears of each player, not between each other.
I don't go out there to say "I'm going to beat so-and-so" today. All you can do is the best you can do. If you do that and the other player has a better score than you, who cares? Trust me, the more you focus on that element of the game, the better of player you'll be. All this chest-thumping and such is just not applicable to golf. I don't get to block your shot or distract you with spinning hypnotic wheels or blow noisemakers while you shoot. One reason why I despise match play and any tournaments that use such a format is that it puts an element of person vs. person into the game that I find pretty ludicrous, and clearly only exists as a macho- ego game...one with which I'm not interested in participating in. Leave the chest-thumping and egos at the clubhouse, or in another sport because that's not why I play the game.