Huh?

    An ad for golf packages at Kiawah Island, SC, in the Wall Street Journal today had the following simple sentences above a wonderful photo of a hole at the famed Ocean Course:

 

"There is epic golf.  Then there is Kiawah."

 

    Wha?  Isn't "epic" a great thing, as in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Godfather series?  "Epic" means beyond imposing and surpassing the ordinary (especially in size).  How much better than that could golf get?  What the Kiawah copywriters appear to be saying is, "There is epic...and then there is pretentious."

 

   

Speaking of pretentious copy, I am working on article to be published here in the next day or two that will describe how golf course communities are trying to outdo each other with outrageous claims in their marketing copy.  This is a bit of pot calling the kettle black; I am a former advertising copywriter.  It should be fun.