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The 2014 Jazzy Awards – Hack Golf and Foot Golf are the Dry, Stringy Turkey Award Winners

turkey

It’s that time again – silly season. Yes the advent of the Holidays heralds peace, love, and goodwill to all men, (and shopping deals to part you from what little disposable income you have left…), but it also means lowest common denominator television events, strange formats, and pining for golf if you live in the North Country.

Still, each year we here at AWITP will help you at least get through to the New Year with our yearly Jay’s Golf Awards – the Jazzys. We’ll spend the next five weeks looking back on the year in golf: the good, the great, the stupid, and the appalling.

Now you need to know one other thing: we hate turkey around here…can’t stand the @#$%, dry, stringy, stinky, feathery, leathery birds. Shoot them and leave them where they fall, and pass me the steak, (or this year we had venison too.

We hate metaphysical turkeys too, so the winner for out metaphoric Chump of the Year honors gets the Dry Stringy Turkey Award, and all the gristle, fat, bone shards, and feathers he can gag on.

This year’s award gets split between Hack Golf and Foot Golf, the two avante garde, new wave “movements” that were supposed to “save” golf…

…well we were lied to. They were meant to raise a few equipment manufacturer’s bottom lines and feed another man’s vanity.

Tony Korologos of Hooked on Golf Blog and the Golf Space did a phenomenal expose on Hack Golf, revealing that it’s nothing more than a ploy by the equipment manufacturers to sell more gear.

With all the “equipment advances” – every new club giving you ten more yards, it’s a wonder we’re all not hitting 450 yards drives.

Hmmm…I better not give them any ideas…

Anyway, you can read Tony’s searing dismemberment of Hack Golf and its ulterior motives here. You can also read his yearly list of Turkeys as well here.

Foot Golf is a joke. Ted Bishop, the now-disgraced former head of the PGA of America dreamt up this travishamockery. It’s basically live action foosball – kick a soccer ball into a 15 inch hole, but also get times so that you score points for playing in the least possible time.

Translation: stupid.

The idea is his to grow golf…seriously. So let me say this out loud, so I have it straight in my head…the growth of the game relies on convincing the members of another small niche demographic, (some of whom may already play the game anyway), to perhaps try to swing a club instead of a leg? I have that right, that’s your story, Ted.

That is pure, weapons-grade BOLONIUM.

And do you think we are buying that excuse? No…

“Oh but at least some courses that are dying can get some revenue,” is the retort. Wrong again…horribly, horribly wrong. 12 guys, maybe 18 a day won’t pay for staff, maintenance, operations, or anything else. But Ted Bishop forced it down resorts’ throats by what some sources infer were ruthless, heavy-handed methods.

Frankly, I’m appalled. How could a man bearing such a trust, being invested in a position of stewardship, be so self-absorbed as to bastardize the game itself?

They look like idiots out there…and I’m a soccer player telling you that. It’s completely incongruous.

Golf simply needs every golfer to just grab every friend and bring them to the course. That’s how you grow the game – one player at a time. So grab your wife, grab your friend, grab your kid and go play. In fact, call me before you leave and I’ll meet you out there.

PAST WINNERS

2013 – Tiger Woods
2012 – Lance Armstrong
2011 – Steve Williams
2010 – Tiger Woods
2009 – Tiger Woods
2008 – ESPN/NFL
2007 – Tom Farrey, ESPN
2006 – Turning Stone Casino