George Carlin thought the two biggest wastes of space on Earth were graveyards and golf courses. Raze them and build housing for homeless people, he suggested. Both don’t just demand valuable real estate but also tax the environment, particularly the latter with its expansive greens, needing constant watering to keep brown blades at bay. For reasons other than conservation, the sport’s popularity has been on the wane in America and most of the world outside Asia, participation severely dipping. From an Economist article about the future of golf:

“As America prospered, public courses opened alongside private clubs and exposed more people to the sport. Real estate helped drive its rise. Between 1992 and 2002, at least 60% of new golf courses were tied to property developments, according to Richard J. Moss, author of The Kingdom of Golf in America, a rich history of the sport. Golf courses increased the value of surrounding homes, and developers built long, complicated courses with the hope of attracting tournaments and attention.

Today America is the largest golf market by a long shot. Around half the world’s golf courses and players are thought to be in America, and the sport contributes around $70 billion to America’s economy according to a 2011 study. Golf is not unlike a first home or a college degree: it carries the allure of progress, of arrival in the middle class. Only a few years ago some golf gurus forecast that the sport would grow even more, as baby boomers retired and flocked to the fairways.

They were wrong. Last year around 25m people played golf, 18% fewer than did so in 2006, although the population grew by 6%. Although still played by men and women, including businesspeople hoping to bond over more than lunch, golf does not hold the same appeal for the young and minorities, groups that will determine its future health. In recent years more people have abandoned than taken up the game.

Emerald courses have not been the source of riches many anticipated. There are simply too many of them. Last year 160 of the country’s 14,600 18-hole equivalent golf facilities shut up shop, the eighth straight year of net closures, according to the National Golf Foundation, an industry group. Steve Skinner of Kemper Sports, a large golf-course operator, thinks it is going to take another ten years to level the imbalance between supply and demand. With only a handful of new courses scheduled for construction in America, architects are looking abroad to find work. ‘If golf-course architecture were a publicly traded stock, it would be a penny stock right now,’ says Brian Curley, an architect who spends much of his time designing courses in China.”