Megalodons are good for marketing.
Moviemakers know this (see: “The Meg” and “The Meg 2”). Golf course operators seem to understand it, too. The newest course at Streamsong Resort in Florida is proof.
In the nearly two years since David McLay Kidd started turning earth on the fourth 18-hole course at Streamsong, golf wonks have been playing a kind parlor game by guessing what the new layout might be called.
A color seemed like a safe bet. Given that the property’s three existing 18-holers went by Blue, Red and Black, surely the next would be a Streamsong Yellow, White or Green, right?
Wrong.
None of the above made the cut. Neither did Puce, Fuchsia or Magenta. A predator helped provide the inspiration instead.
On Tuesday, KemperSports, which owns and operates Streamsong, made it official. McLay Kidd’s design has been christened Bone Valley, and it opens for preview play on Nov. 30.
To understand the choice in name, it helps to bone up on your geologic history.
Millions of years ago, the swath of Central Florida where Streamsong sits was underwater, a roiling ocean filled with all manner of marine life. High up on the aquatic food chain was the megalodon, a shark so outsized it made a Great White look like a minnow. The quantity of fossilized remains gave rise to the name for the region: Bone Valley.
It took little time for McLay Kidd to understand why. When the architect began working on the site, he got a crash course in paleontology. Fossils here. Fossils there. He kept coming upon them. Mostly megalodon teeth. The first time he found one he was blown away. By the fourth or fifth, he told GOLF.com, he was less impressed. “I was like, ah, that one’s broken,” he said. A few months in, unearthing the saw-sharp remains of an ancient fish seemed no more remarkable than stumbling across a cactus in a desert.
The name didn’t come without deliberation. KemperSports went through the expected conversations — yes, colors were among the candidates — before geology settled the decision.
“The name was a natural fit for land and a course that was literally millions of years in the making,” said KemperSports CEO Steve Skinner.
There’s also a commercial logic to the name. Golf course branding lives and breathes through merchandise, and Bone Valley gives a creative team considerably more to work with than, say, Streamsong Yellow. The megalodon already gets big billing in another way — the lobby of Streamsong’s main lodge features the fossilized jaws of one on prominent display. The resort’s logo for the new course leans into the prehistoric as well. It depicts a skeletal, crocodilian creature rendered in sharp, graphic lines that should look nifty on hats and shirts.
No. Not a megalodon. But no matter. The ancient oceans of Central Florida weren’t a one-predator show. Alongside the megalodons swam giant sea turtles, sirenians (ancestors of the manatee) and any number of spiny and slippery things that left their bones in the phosphate-rich soil.
