ABOUT THE FILM  I  VIEW PHOTO GALLERY

	Albert J. Doermaet, Jr., tournament founder

In 2004, Albert J. Doermaet, a businessman from the suburbs of Chicago staged a golf tournament at his country club in Long Grove, IL. Mr. Doermaet put up a $100,000 winner-take-all cash prize for the 9-hole competition. 9 members from his country club (all of them at least as bad at golf as Mr. Doermaet) competed for the money. His goal was simple. He wanted to create a high-stakes golf tournament in which he could be competitive. Despite taking up the game more than twenty years ago, Mr. Doermaet remains, like most Americans, a golfer of very limited skill. "I wanted the tournament to be competitive on my level," he said in a recent interview. "That's why I limited it to bad golfers. I want to play against people I can beat."

Mr. Doermaet didn't win the inaugural tournament (a full rundown of the tournament history is available at the official tournament website www.alsaverageman.com) and held it again in 2005. The field was again limited to other members of his country club. The $100,000 prize, though, attracted the attention of the news media. The news stories proved a catalyst, attracting the attention of a handful of corporations, each of whom expressed interest in sponsoring the 2006 tournament. Mr. Doermaet eventually inked deals with Wilson Golf and Buick. The sponsorships boosted the tournament's purse to a whopping $250,000 and attracted a much larger field.

G.R. Kearney, who heads up West Town Productions, a Chicago-based independent production company, also saw the news stories in 2005 and knew immediately there was a distinctly American (and likely very entertaining) story in Mr. Doermaet's quest to be competitive. Kearney and West Town Productions then partnered with GOTV, a Chicago-based producer of golf and corporate entertainment, to make a documentary about Mr. Doermaet's tournament, the World's Best Bad Golf Tournament. GOTV and West Town Productions then secured notable sports commentator Chet Steihlmohr to help them tell the story.

The third annual Albert J. Doermaet Average Man Invitational was held on October 9, 2006. Handicapped: A documentary about bad golf tells the story of the tournament. Post-production on the film was completed in fall, 2008. The film will begin to appear in film festivals in 2009.

A photo gallery from the 2006 tournament is also available.

For more information about the film, please visit www.westtownproductions.com, or send an e-mail to info @ westtownproductions (dot) com.