Charlie Munger on excess trees

[rboyce]

Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's partner and sidekick. At his final meeting for Wesco, before it is consumed by the larger Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie made a comment regarding excess trees on golf courses.

He said that he thought tree removal was an exorbitant proposal until he saw the final result at which time he agreed it was a good idea.

The point of his comments were to illustrate the benefits of owning your mistakes. He said you can take the pain out of being foolish if you take pleasure in rubbing your nose in your own mistakes.

I think he has used this anecdote before, but it would be interesting to know more of the details.

[Carl Johnson]

This may be a diversion, and if so, please ignore.  No highjack intended.  A week ago last Sunday I played Malone GC in Belfast, a very, very nice parkland course.  They have what I would call an arboreatum program under which members can pay to plant trees.  They look for variety, though I am not sure about the native vs. exotic issue.

However, "strategic" trees may only be planted with under the control of the golf committee.  Sounds good, but although a beautiful and good course, my sense was that if not over-treed now, the course was likely to become so in the future, notwithstanding the golf committee's oversight.

I like the idea as they appear have plenty of property to create an arboreatum around the course, but I'm not sure about the execution as it appears to a first-time visitor.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Carl,

Our golf clubs seem to be obsessed with planting trees in Ireland... In my experience, it is almost treated as oneupmanship and to many course committees, defines that they are "improving" their golf course... (sometimes of course they might be)...

The only cases of deliberate tree clearing (on inland courses) for playability purposes that I've heard of in recent years is at Cork Golf Club and Carlow Golf Club... Being that they were designed by MacKenzie and Simpson respectively, it seems appropriate that the committees there seem aware of what that original design intent might have been...

Ally