It is time for the 6th annual HOG TURKEY AWARDS. The award winners are those who were the biggest boneheads in the past year, in the golf world. Please check out my pal Jay Flemma’s Jazzy Awards as well. He and I collaborate on pieces occasionally and we had some fun discussion in preparation for this year’s Jazzy and Turkey awards…
Last year’s winner was Tiger Woods for his poor behavior on the golf course, the club throwing and such. The awards last year were finalized the day before the big Tiger Woods car crash and the pending affair scandal, otherwise Tiger would have swept the awards back in 2009.
Previous winners before Tiger last year:
Without further ado, here are the top 10 HOG Turkey awards for 2010 as well as the Turkey of the Year below. Drum roll please…
#10 John Daly
What did John Daly do this year to earn a turkey award in 2010? I’m not really sure. I really like the guy, but I’ve gotten so used to putting him in here that I just typed his name out of habit. Perhaps we can say JD deserves an award for under utilizing his immense raw talent.
#9 Sergio Garcia
Watching Sergio play this year was very painful. How a guy with so much raw talent and such a bright future can be such an unhappy and unmotivated player is beyond me. Thankfully Sergio left the game this year. If and when he comes back, I hope he can put it together and enjoy it, and stop wasting all of that talent.
#8 Hyun Ahn and Ilmi Chung
These two LPGA players played the wrong ball, knew it, and tried to get away with it. That is CHEATING. To make it even worse, they told one caddie, “you didn’t see anything.”
#7 Money hungry Tiger Woods mistresses
Earlier this year Tiger mistress and porn star Devon James (Devon is not pictured left, pictured left is another TW mistress named Joslyn James) was shopping around a XXX video of her and Tiger Woods. Eventually she admitted that the tape was a fake which she made with a TW look-a-like.
Devon and all the other TW mistresses need to now go away. We are all sick of you. Please.
#6 Jim Furyk DQ’d for sleeping in and missing pro-am
First of all, I’m a big Jim Furyk fan. This guy is the epitome of what a PGA Tour player should be.
But even the best of us can be boneheads and Jim isn’t immune to that. Furyk’s phone battery died, and he uses his phone for his wake up alarm. Alarm doesn’t go off, he misses the pro-am at The Barclays which is the first FedEx cup event. For sleeping in Jim was disqualified. That’s enough to earn a turkey award.
The funny thing is that Furyk won the FedEx Cup anyway, even after missing the first playoff event. Way to go Jimbo.
#5 PGA Tour for DQing Jim Furyk
As noted in the previous turkey award, Furyk was DQ’d by the PGA Tour in the first playoff event for sleeping in and missing (possibly not all but some) the pro-am.
For a player who is so rock solid and such a great example for a PGA Tour player, the Tour should have simply fined him a few bucks and allowed him to play but they didn’t. Later they actually changed that rule.
For this boneheaded implementation of a dumb policy, the PGA Tour gets a turkey award.
#4 Two chicks who I hope didn’t sleep with a dude they thought was John Daly
I’ve searched and searched through facebook, but I can no longer find this very funny photo. These two chicks ran into a guy in a hotel somewhere who barely, barely looked like John Daly. I mean, if you saw him from 300 yards away and he had golf clubs in his hands and those nutty pants on, you might think it was him.
These two chicks posted a photo on their facebook page posing with this guy with the quote, “here we are with John Daly.” The guy saw an opportunity, was pretending to be JD and loving the attention from these two females.
The real JD found that photo on Facebook and commented in “that’s not me!!!”
I just hope those two girls didn’t sleep with this guy…
#3 Ryuji Imada 26 stroke penalty
Ryuji Imada most definitely earns a turkey award for suffering 26 penalty strokes in a tournament in China.
#2 Dustin Johnson for finding a way to not win two majors
Once again I have to preface this award by saying that I’m a big Dustin Johnson fan. I think DJ will win several majors before his career is over, and perhaps getting this close twice this year will give him the experience he needs later down the road.
DJ had a three shot lead in the final round of the US OPEN at Pebble this year. It was very hard to watch him give that up. Once the unraveling started, it couldn’t be stopped. I felt really bad for DJ.
Two more majors down the road at the PGA Championship was the now famous “Bunkergate.” On the 18th hole at Whistling Straights I remember watching DJ ground his club and saying out loud (even though I was alone), “Oh my God he just grounded his club!!!” I then fell out of my chair.
That club grounding, in a bunker destroyed by patrons walking in it, cost DJ a penalty stroke and a chance at a playoff for the PGA Championship.
#1 Ray Halbritter gives himself a sponsors exemption to the Turning Stone event
Ray Halbritter, CEO of the title sponsor at the Turning Stone PGA Tour event, gives himself a sponsor’s exemption to play in the tournament. Isn’t that great?
So some tour player who is living out of his car, struggling get his tour card and trying to make a living can’t play because this CEO decides to give himself the sponsor’s exemption? Wow. That deserves a 2010 HOG turkey award.
AND THE WINNER IS…
How disappointing has the last 365 days been for Tiger Woods fans? We watched world #1, the perfect role model for our kids, the guy on the Wheaties boxes, the man with the perfect marriage and two beautiful children, the man who’s wife was one all other men dream of having… we watched that all fall apart because of TW’s “transgressions.”
I admit it. I was a fan. I was anxiously awaiting the day TW broke Jack Nicklaus’ major record, but not anymore. I didn’t want to believe all the crazy stories which were surfacing a year ago. Like many thousands of TW fans, I’m very disappointed.
Conversely, the last year has been a feast at the most gluttonous of buffets for the Tiger haters. They’ve come out of the woodwork, enjoying the fall of the biggest house of cards ever.
For all the affairs, strippers, sexting, porn stars, Perkins waitresses… For the phony image which was pounded into our daily lives on TV, print media, billboards, web advertising, by Tiger’s sponsors and PR engine… For the lies… For the disappointment…
Tiger Woods wins the 2010 Hooked On Golf Blog Turkey of the Year. Barring some insane and unlikely happening, TW will win the Turkey of the DECADE.
Time To Move On
I’m sick of all the talk about the porn stars and affairs and all that. I want them all to go away now. I see through the transparency of the new Tiger Woods twitter activity and interviews. They’re obviously trying to resurrect his image, which is understandable. I’m not really paying a lot of attention to those things.
Some say TW’s time has come and gone and that he won’t break Jack’s record. They may be right with all this new and young talent in the USA and Europe. Only time will tell.
What TW needs to do is move on, show the public that he can be genuine (which I’m sure many doubt), and play championship golf. We’ll know how well TW has succeeded if he doesn’t win any more HOG Turkey Awards.
Tigers don’t roar, they tweet
Tiger breaks silence… on twitter
I could make up a lot of titles for this, but Tiger Woods has started tweeting on Twitter. I’d be interested to read Tiger’s tweets, provided they were about behind the scenes stuff and thoughts on tournaments etc, which weren’t covered in his pressers.
Whenever there are emails floating around about Tiger Woods home they’re often tied to real estate entities of some sort. I got an email from a guy named Jeff Lichtenstein which had this attachment of Tiger Woods house, with the new golf layout etc. Needless to say, this pad doesn’t suck. Click the picture to view a larger version.
If you are considering playing this course, you might want to wait 2-3 weeks. It looks like the greens have just been punched and sanded…
Jeff is with Christies / Great Estates and Illustrated properties and/or jeffrealty.com. At the risk of posting a copyrighted photo without permission I’m mentioning his name, and here’s a link to an analysis of the property and the practice facility by Cary Lichtenstein. I don’t know the relation but I’m sure there is one.
Related Links
I’ve got many more images of Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods homes both real and fake in the HOG Tiger Woods image gallery.
Due to his schedule and the way the world golf ranking works, it is a FACT that Tiger Woods will drop from the #1 ranking in the world on October 31st.
In all likelihood Lee Westwood will become world #1 on 10/31.
Martin Kaymer (winner of the 2010 PGA Championship) could take the #1 spot though if he were to win the Andalucia Valderrama Masters.
I hadn’t posted this photo because I thought it was fake, but apparently it isn’t. Photographer “Mark Pain” (quite the pun, considering this situation) snapped this image right before a Tiger Woods’ chip shot hit him in the chest and fell to the ground. So was Tiger that far off or did the photographer get in the way of the shot? And nobody has mentioned whether or not Tiger’s caddy Steve Williams smashed the photographer’s camera…
Update: There’s a guy on the right with a mustache and a cigar. This guy has been photoshopped into hundreds of photos all over the net. “Cigar Guy” has become quite a rage…. Read the next post.