I’ve waited way too long to blow a kiss to John Paul Newport of the Wall Street Journal, who several months ago went on an extended riff about golf course names and what he calls “the imaginative power of those who dream up the names.”
Here are some highlights:
The bird is the word. There are, to be precise, 149 U.S. golf courses with eagle in the name, according to a count of nearly 13,000 golf facilities by the National Golf Foundation. They range from the Soaring Eagles Golf Course in Horseheads, New York to the somewhat less inspiringly named Spread Eagle Golf Course in Spread Eagle, Wisconsin. There is an Eagle Point golf course in Oregon and an Eagle Pointe in Indiana. The difference, primarily of interest to marketers, is approximately the same as between shop and shoppe. . . .
Deer in the headlights. The word deer is a convenient naming device because deer are ubiquitous, to the point of actually being a nuisance in many regions, thanks to a fall-off in natural predators. Yet deer still connote woodland innocence. Thus real-estate developers, the primary source of new golf courses for at least the last 40 years, retain plausible credibility when they transform previously featureless tracts of land into golf nirvanas with names such as Deer Park, Deer Creek, Deer Meadow, Deer Run, Deer Ridge, and Deer Trace, not to mention Doe Valley and Fawn Crest. . . .
As times go by. Golf course names, if not the courses themselves, provide a fair gloss on American history. You could start at Plymouth Country Club in Massachusetts and continue to Patriot Hills Golf Club and Rip Van Winkle Country Club in New York. Then, Peace Pipe Country Club in New Jersey, Pocahontas Golf Course in Iowa, the Links at Davy Crockett in Tennessee, Little Bighorn Golf Club in Indiana, Westward Ho Country Club in South Dakota, Oregon Trail Country Club in Idaho, Conestoga Golf Club in Nevada, and, finally, Settlers Bay Golf Course in Wasilla, Alaska (Sarah Palin's town). . . .
The soul of the game. Far too many course names sound like they were lifted from children's books: Candywood, Melody Valley, Happy Hollow, Sunny Meadows, Sugar Isle, Songbird Hills, Kissing Camels, Growling Frog. Luckily, these are countered by a slate of names that seem to get golf's personality just about right: Chagrin Valley, Crab Meadow, Bogey Hills, Grindstone Neck, Murder Rock, Nutters Crossing, Ruffled Feathers, Sourwood Forest, and the Creek at Hard Labor. . . .
The wrong side of the law. To create buzz, developers are using macho names like Horse Thief Country Club in Tehachapi, California, Renegade Golf Course in Wyoming, the Bandit in Texas, the Hombre in Florida, the Devil's Claw in Arizona, and Thunder Canyon -- one each in Idaho and Nevada. . . .
Dark shadows. House Speaker John Boehner was recently caught on an open mic describing his two-under-par round at a remote high-end course in Nebraska called Dismal River. There are a surprising number of similarly dour course names: Stoney Links, Stumpy Lake, Reedy Creek, Useless Bay, Potholes, Charwood, Rainsville, Furnace Creek, and the Pit Golf Links, much less Mold Golf Club in Wales. Maybe the owners are just doing the best with what they have. . . .
