From TW perspective, I would think that the other big disaster would be the other article, saying JN and AP have taken back the lead as celeb endorsers in golf. That was his big income off course.
I appreciate the quote from Jerry Sager for reasons similar to Mike N.
Brad,
I had the occaison to hire a feasibilty company (who I knew and respected) as a sub on a big team deal, and having worked with them before, was surprised to hear the first ten minutes of their presentation was a dissertation on how much more sophisicated their process had become since the last study I saw. It was almost apologetic.
But, it was also true. Because of low dollar volume, golf has never had as sophisticated study methods as real estate. NGF started them as far as I knew. At one time, there was the simple rule of 1 public course for every 50,000 people. Later, they came out with better local data, since some states participate at 13% and others have golf particpation rates of 8 or 9% which could be a 50% difference in rounds.
I have seen a few that say no, BTW. Or, at least say no if you read between the lines. Usually, they say "yes, if" and there are oodles of unlikely things that have to happen. Some disguise the unlikeliness with flowery language, like the one I read years ago that only mentioned that there was no water for the project in the summary.
I only know of a few lawsuits against feasibility companies, and would imagine contracts are written to limit liability for being paid to make a guess at the future. I would also support that, in that a lot of things beyond the control of the feasibility guys have to be done right for anyone wanting to play a course, including design, marketing, maintenance, etc. But, I agree there have been a few studies that probably warrant some legal action and maybe the guys presenting to me were a target of one of those suits, which forced them to rethink their basic mentality about the whole process.