Jay:
Well if they had a good local reason to name the course as they did, then I'm sorry for my wrong assumption.
Jim Engh did just open a course less than five miles from where our Harmony Club was supposed to be located, so I would be surprised if he'd never heard the name ... but that doesn't mean he's the one who suggested it of course. I've only gotten to name one course out of the 20+ we've done.
I dont know if Jim ever heard the name and it is logical to assume that maybe he dat least heard of it since he was at Reynolds, so I'll make good on my promise of picking up our next A&Ws and hot dogs in Northern michigan. But you hit the nail on the head when you said you only got to name one course out of the 20+. I DO know that the course was named by the owners and Jim and team had no input in it. I think they had the name picked out completely independently.
I'll take a wild guess...was High Pointe your one course that you got to name?
This underlines the need to carefuly research and take steps to protect the name of your course if you want to protect it to the exclusion of all others. The best thing to do to protect a name of a golf course is 1) pick a name that is unique, and 2) search to make sure noone else has it and 3) make sure it's not descriptive of a geographical feature. Then you can register the name with the PTO. Ballyneal is a great example...while it means "place of neal" there's assumedly, no other place of neal or ballyneal in the country. Boom! Register the name and move the merch!
In the case of names that are geographically descriptive, you have to establish what's called "secondary meaning" showing that the public equates the name with the golf course and not the location.