"Far too many course names sound like they were lifted from children's books."

Those of you who've read my Future of Golf know how I feel about golf course names and that there has yet to be a great golf course named for an animal doing something, and after reading John Paul Newport's Saturday WSJ column on golf course names, I feel safe in my assumption.

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, N.Y., to the somewhat less inspiringly named Spread Eagle Golf Course in Spread Eagle, Wis. 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.

And this...

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.

I'm not sure how retirees respond to courses with names like Trails End, Twilight, Teetering Rocks, Tumbledown Trails, Coldwinters and Petrifying Springs. You'd think they'd prefer to play at Endwell Greens or Paradise Pastures.