At least around here, there’s 3 types of golf courses
Mosquito-infested exurban swamps without sewers (that are often trying to sell out to developers)
Floodplains or dumps where you can’t build anything. Often overlapping with #1. Which in fairness *could* be parks instead of pay-to-use single-use parks, but can you raise taxes for it?
Literally holding a US Open on obscene budgets, but like…. ok fine, US Open course. Top 1% quality right there.
Around my childhood home there’s “course an assembly of local town elite came together to found a country club around to validate themselves in the 30s-40s”; “course a town government established in the 50s-60s in the course of building out as an executive-class-and-aspiring suburb of Philadelphia” (both of which were basically built on whatever land was available at the edge of town); and “course built on scouted and sited land in the ‘90s serving a whole exurban region of golfers”
