Garland, even if the owners weren't examining his work, I would hope they at least talked about the vision and concept for the course. Even on projects where I've been lucky enough to have a free hand, I still made sure that the owners were onboard for the overall concept of the course. If they owners (I don't know anything about them so I won't speculate) didn't know enough about what they were getting, they should have either got educated or got some help (I would have forwarded Don Mahaffey's #).
Is too much being made of this? All to often, we push projects at light speed to get them open and the cash register ringing and are never allowed the time to step back and assess what we have done. God forbid you have to tell the constractor "just wait a week". As Dad was fond of saying,"there's never enough time or money to do it right the first time but they always seem to come up with it on the next go 'round?"
Ross is appaulded for "tinkering with #2 his whole life. Boy he musta really sucked as an architect