It takes the limited resources of land and water from a community and sells the result for profit as food or fuel. The vast majority of profit is made downstream and outside the community.
Golf courses being a traditional green place where people gather seems a bit far fetched to me when most of them are elite private clubs.
Most golf courses around me are open and anyone can go play for a cheap greens fee. The clubhouse has normal low end restaurant prices for a hot dog or a burger.
As far as "valuable", the golf course is private property that the owners presumably bought and can do with as they see fit. If you want to develop it into something else, make an offer to them?
The golf courses are a business like any other (although we do have some publicly-owned golf courses around here too). The cost to play 9 holes on a weekday is $10 at one of them. I'm not really sure what you're asking for here.
That's highly dependent on the area it's in. Where I live, golf courses use no more water than anyone else and aren't irrigated.
The proper answer would be to simply charge appropriate prices for large scale uses of water from the water utility, or else this is a discussion about riparian rights and law and possible changes needed to that.
People are more lenient on farming because humans need agriculture to survive. Obviously not all agriculture is necessary for survival, but it's something that in some way provides real tangible benefits for everyone.
On the other hand, if AI data centres all disappeared today, humanity would continue on completely fine.
I associate golf with WASP-y business types who hobnob with their boss in an electric cart to get ahead, and can't stop talking about their hobby of chasing a little white ball.
Is that fair? Probably not. But I don't think golf is a particularly inclusive sport, unless you live in a golf course gated community... in which case everyone is included.
It takes the limited resources of land and water from a community and sells the result for profit as food or fuel. The vast majority of profit is made downstream and outside the community.
Golf courses being a traditional green place where people gather seems a bit far fetched to me when most of them are elite private clubs.