Josh Cutler
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Abolish Golf

Golf courses occupy over 2.2 million acres of American land. That’s more than 3,500 square miles, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Globally, countries dedicate more land to golf courses than to solar and wind energy installations. We are in the middle of overlapping housing, climate, and public health crises, and we’ve decided that maintaining private lawns for a sport played primarily by wealthy people is a reasonable use of some of the most valuable land on the planet. It isn’t.

It’s time to abolish golf as a land use category and reclaim these spaces for the public good.

Author’s note: I don’t golf, though I have been known to vigorously debate whether golf is a “sport”. This isn’t about the activity itself. It’s about the land, the water, the chemicals, and who benefits from all of it. I’m coming at this from a policy and urbanism lens, not a personal vendetta against anyone’s weekend hobby.

The Scale of the Problem

The United States has over 16,000 golf courses spanning 2,244,512 acres (per the GCSAA’s own environmental profile). That’s 3,507 square miles. If golf were a U.S. state, it would be larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. These are not small numbers.

In urban areas, the picture is even more striking. Nearly 7,000 urban golf courses cover approximately 3,100 km², representing 29% of all urban greenspace while serving a tiny fraction of the population. An average 18-hole course occupies 150 acres. These aren’t pocket parks. They’re sprawling estates of chemically maintained grass, and they sit on some of the most desirable real estate in every major metro area.

A 2025 study published in Environmental Research Communications puts this in a global context that borders on absurd. Countries across the world dedicate more land to golf courses than to wind or solar energy infrastructure. Canada has 16 times more land allocated to golf than to solar installations. The top 10 golf countries could install 281 to 842 GW of utility-scale solar capacity on equivalent land. In a world racing to decarbonize, we have allocated more physical space to a recreational activity for the affluent than to the energy infrastructure we need to avoid climate catastrophe.

The Water Problem

U.S. golf facilities used an estimated 1.63 million acre-feet of water in 2024. During peak season, a single 18-hole course consumes 100,000 to 1,000,000 gallons per week. In arid regions, a single course can use up to 1 million gallons per day.

The industry’s response to these numbers is to point at efficiency gains. The GCSAA’s own survey reports a 31% reduction in water use since 2005, and the Southwest region reduced consumption by 16.9% between 2020 and 2024. Fair enough. A 31% reduction sounds impressive until we remember the baseline. A 31% reduction from an obscene number is still a very large number.

Where is this water coming from? 32% from wells, 27% from lakes and ponds, and 19% from recycled water. Only 19% comes from recycled water. In states like Arizona and California, where water rights are a life-or-death policy issue, we are pumping millions of gallons per day into ornamental grass so that people with median household incomes above $100,000 can enjoy a leisure activity. This should provoke more outrage than it does.

A Poison Carpet

Here is something that should be leading the evening news: living near a golf course more than doubles the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

A study using the Mayo Clinic Rochester Epidemiology Project found that people living within one mile of a golf course were 126% more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Not a 10% increase. Not a marginal effect. A 126% increase. Households served by water systems containing a golf course within their boundaries had 96% higher Parkinson’s risk compared to those without one.

The mechanism is straightforward. While practices have evolved, a 1995 New York Attorney General investigation found that Long Island golf courses applied pesticides at 4 to 7 times the rate of agriculture on a per-acre basis. Rainwater washes these chemicals into rivers, streams, and groundwater, contributing to eutrophication and potentially contaminating groundwater and surface water.

The American regulatory approach makes this worse. A 2023 comparative analysis found that the U.S. allows 200 to 250 pesticide active ingredients for golf course use. Denmark, Norway, and the UK permit fewer than 20. This is not a debate about tradeoffs or acceptable risk. We are saturating populated areas with neurotoxic chemicals so that grass can be maintained to an aesthetic standard for a sport. Golf course workers, who face the greatest direct exposure, bear an even heavier burden. This is a public health issue and a labor issue.

The Equity Illusion

The golf industry has worked hard on diversity, and the numbers show it. In 2024, 25% of on-course golfers were Black, Asian, or Hispanic, and 28% were female, both records. Going from 8% non-white participation in 1990 to 25% in 2024 is meaningful progress.

But racial diversity is the metric the industry chose to lead with, and it’s worth asking why. The class data is far less comfortable.

The median golfer household income is over $100,000, compared to the U.S. median of roughly $80,000. Industry advertising data puts the average at $125,000. The largest single income segment of golfers (26%, as of 2015) earns over $125,000 per year. The average golfer spends nearly $2,800 annually on the sport. The median initiation fee at a private golf club is $56,000, up from $25,000 before the pandemic, with annual dues averaging around $12,000. Even “budget” public courses now charge an average of $37 per round; at 40 rounds per year, that’s nearly $1,500 in green fees alone.

How does this compare to other recreation? According to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play survey, families spend about $1,002 per year on youth basketball and $1,188 on youth soccer, costs that are already considered barriers to access in those sports. Running is essentially free. A public park costs nothing.

A 2023 BMC Public Health study measuring the Relative Index of Inequality across dozens of sports found that the “special sports” category (which includes golf alongside skiing and diving) had an RII of 4.47, the highest of any category measured. For context: football was 0.68 (slightly skewing working-class) and tennis was 4.25. Sports like golf, skiing, and diving are among the most class-stratified in the developed world. And the trend is heading in the wrong direction. UK longitudinal data shows that professional and managerial class golf consumption trended upward from 2006 to 2010, while working class participation declined systematically year-over-year. The gap is widening, not narrowing.

The National Golf Foundation notes that nearly 40% of golfers had household incomes under $75,000 as of 2015. This is worth engaging with honestly: some less affluent people do play golf. But they play far fewer rounds, and cost is consistently the most-cited barrier to participation among lower-income individuals. A sport where the median participant earns 25% above the national median and the average annual cost approaches $3,000 is not broadly accessible, regardless of what the tail of the distribution looks like.

So why does this matter beyond the sport itself? Because of what golf courses do to the land they occupy. Urban golf courses consume 29% of all urban greenspace while gating that space behind fees. Meanwhile, predominantly white neighborhoods already have 44% more park space per resident than communities of color. Parks serving majority non-white populations are half the size and serve five times as many people. 100 million Americans, including 28 million children, lack a park within a 10-minute walk of home.

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine designing an urban amenity from scratch that costs nearly $3,000 per year, serves households with a median income 25% above the national median, occupies nearly a third of all urban greenspace, and is fenced off from the surrounding neighborhood. Now imagine that across the country, 100 million people cannot walk to a free park. No one would design this system intentionally. But that is what we have, and we maintain it because we have always maintained it.

“But Golf Courses Are Green Space”

This is the strongest counterargument and it deserves an honest answer.

A USGA-funded study of 135 Twin Cities golf courses found that they provide measurable cooling, stormwater management, and pollinator habitat compared to developed land. Golf course surface temperatures averaged 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit versus 95 to 98.6 for residential, industrial, and commercial areas. Nationally, roughly 23% of golf course land consists of non-turfgrass natural areas and water bodies that can provide meaningful habitat (per the GCSAA’s own environmental profile). The USGA argues, with some justification, that properly managed golf courses provide more cooling and stormwater retention than most urban land uses.

All true. Also a spectacularly low bar.

The comparison that matters isn’t golf course versus parking lot. It’s golf course versus the alternatives. And here, the same Twin Cities study provides the answer. Conservation areas averaged 86.0 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly two degrees cooler than golf courses. Natural areas and city parks export less nitrogen and phosphorus than golf courses. Both provide habitat and stormwater management without the intensive pesticide application.

The choice isn’t between a golf course and a Walmart. It’s between a chemically maintained private lawn and a restored public landscape that serves everyone, cools better, filters better, and doesn’t give the neighbors Parkinson’s. Framed correctly, abolishing golf courses is an environmental upgrade, not a loss.

What Comes Next

The vision isn’t a world with zero golf. It’s a world where we stop treating golf courses as a default land use that deserves public subsidy and regulatory protection. What replaces a golf course should depend on where it is and what the community needs.

In cities with severe housing shortages, the math is compelling. San Francisco’s five public golf courses consume 1.5% of the city’s land. One course alone could provide housing for 10,000 people. LA’s Rancho Park could fit homes for roughly 50,000 residents, more than the city’s entire homeless population. California has already advanced legislation subsidizing cities that convert public golf courses to affordable housing.

In suburban areas, the conversions look different. In Belgium, Wisconsin, a 116-acre course was transformed into the Forest Beach Migratory Preserve, with its clubhouse repurposed as a community center. In Detroit, the former Rogell Golf Course is becoming 304 affordable housing units (198 townhomes and 106 senior housing units) serving residents earning 30% to 80% of area median income. Near Palm Springs, a course is becoming a mixed-use “agrihood” with 75 acres of olive groves.

In arid regions, the case for immediate elimination is strongest. The water simply cannot be justified.

This is already happening organically. Nearly 1,500 courses have closed since 2014. The question is not whether golf courses will continue to close. It’s whether we guide that process toward public benefit or let market forces alone determine what comes next (which usually means luxury condos rather than affordable housing or public parks).

The Political Reality

None of this will be easy. I want to be straightforward about that.

Denver voters rejected a plan to convert a private golf course into thousands of homes in 2023. For every successful conversion, ten fail, typically victims of zoning hurdles and NIMBYism from small but motivated resident groups. The people who live adjacent to golf courses benefit from the inflated property values that the open space provides, and they have every incentive to block redevelopment. They do, effectively and repeatedly.

But political difficulty doesn’t make a policy wrong. It took decades to build consensus around smoking bans, seatbelt laws, and lead paint removal. All of them faced entrenched industries and the argument that the problem wasn’t as bad as critics claimed. The evidence eventually won.

The environmental case (1.63 million acre-feet of water, more land than all our renewable energy infrastructure), the equity case (29% of urban greenspace gated behind a nearly-$3,000-per-year cost while 100 million Americans can’t walk to a free park), and the public health case (126% increased Parkinson’s risk within a mile) are each individually sufficient. Layer on the fiscal case ($490,000 per year in foregone tax revenue for a single course in Madison, Wisconsin, plus $1.2 million in annual tax subsidies to just two private clubs in Seattle) and the argument becomes difficult to counter with a straight face.

We should start with the easiest targets: publicly owned courses in cities with severe housing shortages and water crises. End the subsidies. Reform the zoning. Let communities decide what they actually need from the most valuable land in their neighborhoods. The answer will not be golf.

Things I read while thinking about this