Quote JES II:
I do not have the first clue how Jack runs this business, but my instinct tells me that there are some courses he gets more involved in and some he is hardly involved in (personally) at all.
END
I'd agree. Simple math dictates this.
Quote JES II:
"Jack is running a business and some of his clients want Jack's name attached to their course for obvious reasons, but may not want to pay for him to be the hands on architect. A smart business man would accommodate."
"Accomodate" is the perfect word, as it reveals a certain looseness. To me it doesn't matter who would accomodate what. In this vein, it seems everyone defaults to Donald Ross, but even he realized the weakness of his ways, and hey, shouldn't standards be elevated instead of going to the lowest common denominator? Today they've gone pretty low, and nobody questions it. Nobody in the press.
Comparing software programs to golf courses is like comparing clouds to asphalt, it's a little weak, but comparing Warren Buffett's analysis with what has been and is going on in the golf industry is more apt.
To me the following from Warren Buffett's letter to shareholders hits a bullseye if transferred what has happened in golf course architecture.
highly edited...
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1998htm.html Accounting -- Part 2
It was once relatively easy to tell the good guys in accounting from the bad: The late 1960's, for example, brought on an orgy of what one charlatan dubbed "bold, imaginative accounting" (the practice of which, incidentally, made him loved for a time by Wall Street because he never missed expectations). But most investors of that period knew who was playing games. And, to their credit, virtually all of America's most-admired companies then shunned deception.
In recent years, probity has eroded. Many major corporations still play things straight, but a significant and growing number of otherwise high-grade managers -- CEOs you would be happy to have as spouses for your children or as trustees under your will -- have come to the view that it's okay to manipulate earnings to satisfy what they believe are Wall Street's desires. Indeed, many CEOs think this kind of manipulation is not only okay, but actually their duty.
These managers start with the assumption, all too common, that their job at all times is to encourage the highest stock price possible (a premise with which we adamantly disagree). To pump the price, they strive, admirably, for operational excellence. But when operations don't produce the result hoped for, these CEOs resort to unadmirable accounting stratagems. These either manufacture the desired "earnings" or set the stage for them in the future.
Rationalizing this behavior, these managers often say that their shareholders will be hurt if their currency for doing deals -- that is, their stock -- is not fully-priced, and they also argue that in using accounting shenanigans to get the figures they want, they are only doing what everybody else does. Once such an everybody's-doing-it attitude takes hold, ethical misgivings vanish.
The distortion du jour is...
Unfortunately, CEOs who use variations of these scoring schemes in real life tend to become addicted to the games they're playing -- after all, it's easier to fiddle with the scorecard than to spend hours on the practice tee -- and never muster the will to give them up. Their behavior brings to mind Voltaire's comment on sexual experimentation: "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert."
Berkshire has kept entirely clear of these practices: If we are to disappoint you, we would rather it be with our earnings than with our accounting. ...
Clearly the attitude of disrespect that many executives have today for accurate reporting is a business disgrace. And auditors, as we have already suggested, have done little on the positive side. Though auditors should regard the investing public as their client, they tend to kowtow instead to the managers who choose them and dole out their pay. ("Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.")
A big piece of news, however, is that the SEC, led by its chairman, Arthur Levitt, seems determined to get corporate America to clean up its act. In a landmark speech last September, Levitt called for an end to "earnings management." He correctly observed, "Too many corporate managers, auditors and analysts are participants in a game of nods and winks." And then he laid on a real indictment: "Managing may be giving way to manipulating; integrity may be losing out to illusion."
I urge you to read the Chairman's speech (you can find it on the Internet at
www.sec.gov) and to support him in his efforts to get corporate America to deliver a straight story to its owners. Levitt's job will be Herculean, but it is hard to think of another more important for him to take on.
END
My guess is the press is the one who should act a little like Arthur Levitt, but they're in on the scam too, using a line from Warren Buffett's letter: ("Whose bread I eat, his song I sing."). Wouldn't it be quite something to have one person in the press corps question a tour plyer about Course "X", and if he really deserves credit for work he hasn't done? Or at least sharing credit? No, the bad accounting goes on... "they are only doing what everybody else does. Once such an everybody's-doing-it attitude takes hold, ethical misgivings vanish."