Clint Eastwood made his fortune playing a man with no name. But as even he knows, names are valuable property, which is why a company he coowns is disputing an Irish hotel's use of a famous one.
Pebble Beach, the Californian golf complex which includes the course where Tiger Woods won the US Open, has written to management at Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara, asking it to desist from using the name to describe its par-three nine-hole facility.
In what could be a case of Coogan's Bluff, the Americans have also demanded a meeting in London next month with the owners of the Irish Pebble Beach, to discuss their opinion that the world ain't big enough for both of them.
It's a case that highlights the good, the bad and the ugly in corporate attitudes and it has left management at the Galway hotel bemused. "We can see their point," says Ronnie Counihan, chief executive at Renvyle, "but at the same time, we're no threat to them. Ours is a fun course and the name has been here a long time."
There has been golf at Renvyle from the era of its famous former owner, writer and surgeon, Oliver St John Gogarty. The facilities were always modest and the use of the name Pebble Beach began as a joke, while also being a translation of "An Duirling", the name of the local coastline.
The US company's lawyers have done their homework, however, pointing out that An Duirling translates more accurately as "stony beach". Their letter also traded history with Renvyle management, evoking the Californian course's illustrious past and its association with names such as Nicklaus, Watson and Woods.
Renvyle is also steeped in history, although its most famous guests were not known for their low handicaps. W.B. Yeats honeymooned there, Churchill stayed too. But while the competing histories may be a tie, there's no contest when it comes to green fees.
Renvyle's are £10. By contrast, Pebble Beach costs $350 a round. To secure a game, you should ideally book into one of the resort's hotels, where a room costs from $475 to $2,395 a night and people are advised to book up to two years in advance. For a few dollars more ($50 plus a gratuity), guests are also advised to hire a caddy.
The Pebble Beach website lovingly describes the course, dubbing the 18th hole "a poem in grass". Readers may conclude that the poet was smoking grass, as the site speaks of "a parenthesis set in ocean and rock" and "a golf photographer's version of a supermodel".
But if it comes to poetry, Renvyle House wins every time. Describing its setting between lake and sea, Gogarty wrote: "It is as if, in the faery land of Connemara, at the extreme end of Europe, the incongruous flowed together at last, and the sweet and bitter blended. Behind me, islands and mountainous mainland share in a final reconciliation, at this, the world's end."
