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HOW DO GOLF COURSES GET THEIR NAMES?  PERHAPS FEROCITY IS ONE TEST

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I have had the privilege to play a lot of golf courses in the United States, as well as in Scotland.

Along the way, I often have wondered how golf courses got their names. 

Sometimes it’s just logical.  At The Palms in La Quinta, California, where I play in the winter, it’s easy – there are more than 200 palm trees on the course.  Thus, the name arrives quickly.

In Salem, Oregon, my normal home, I have played Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club for more than 30 years.  There, the names doesn’t arrive so quickly. 

Nothing else is called “Illahe” in the region.

The derivation is not clear.  All I have heard is that “Illahe” is a Native American name.  My only idea is that one of the persons who formed Illahe as a golf course more than 60 years ago, faced the obvious challenge of a name.  They came up with Illahe.

So it was that I read with interest an article in my most recent edition of Links Magazine.  It joined the naming fray when it ran a story under the label,  “The Fiercest Golf Course Names.”

Here is how the article started:

“The very best golf course names accurately depict their settings and entice you to play.  Think Pebble Beach, or the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort.  Some course names entice you with prospects of comfort, such as California’s Friendly Hills or Nebraska’s Happy Hollow.

“Other course names are more forbidding.  Either they repel by their very nature, or they tempt with the promise of stern challenges and obstacles to overcome.   A few of our favorite chilling course names that have gone away are Bloody Point, The Witch (both in South Carolina), and Murder Rock in Missouri, a 2007 John Daly design. 

“Nonetheless, countless examples remain of course names that signify fear and foreboding in the round ahead.”

Here is the Links rendition of the 10 fiercest golf course names in the U.S.:

Not sure I would want to play any of those, unless I ignored the name.

Back to Illahe and The Palms.  Neither is fierce by name.

But, by playing charactistics?  Yes.

At Illahe, it’s important to avoid all the trees on the course and, given the character of the greens – most run downhill from back to front – the best advice is to stay below the hole.

At The Palms, yes, there are many trees, but also the greens carry a certain kind of ferocity.  They always run at least 11 on the stimpmeter and feature various slopes that, if you are not careful, take your ball off the green and down into a swale, even if your shot lands on the green first. 

Plus, veterans at the place told me when I arrived that it was not possible “to read the greens; you had to memorize what a putt would do.”

So, fierce?  “No” by name.  But “yes” by style of play.

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