The Squawpig Golf & Bocce Club, founded in 1996, is a USGA "Club without Real Estate," based in the Greater Boston area. We are a member club of the Massachusetts Golf Associaton and issue USGA licensed handicaps to members via the Golf Handicap Information Network.
Just what is a "Squawpig"?
The word itself is the gibberish interpretation of a four-year-old's gibberish reference to a character in a children's book. As legend goes, at some point in the 1990s, a number of the club's founders were on a ski trip and chose to while away their evening inventing a new card game. By evening's end, through cooperative debate, compromise and discourse only surpassed by the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams some two centuries earlier, came forth a competition unmatched in amusement, gamesmanship, and democratic ideal. When time came to name this new venture, the participants settled on "Squawpig." While the precise reasoning remains unclear, it represented the malleated form of the name of a character in a children's book, a seemingly fitting moniker for a game about making and modifying rules with the sole intent of increasing good spirits and conviviality.
Sadly, there remains no known documentation of the evening. Even the participants, upon the next morning, were hardpressed to recall the rules and nature of the game that they had invented. It has often been postulated that the inadequate recollection of the evening may have been attributed to the presence and liberal use of intoxicating beverages. However, even upon this fact, the participants claim uncertainty.
While the word has no true meaning, a squawpig could be said to describe any social activity that is malleable in its rules and ardent in its pursuit of good fun. However, over the years, perhaps reflective of the tastes and appearance of some of its membership, a squawpig has taken on the form of an overweight, gruff and smirking pig.
As to the bocce, that is another story, involving, in part, an apple orchard, a marathon, and, again, rumors of intoxicating beverages.