The numbers of Americans playing tennis regularly has dwindled dramatically over the past two decades. Now, golf is showing signs of suffering a similar fate:

Over the past decade, the leisure activity most closely associated with corporate success in America has been in a kind of recession.
The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.
More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third.
The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation. [. . .]
Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years, most of them in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina, according to the foundation.

Over the past 20 years or so, many residential real estate developers have used golf courses as magnets to attract home buyers to their developments. The developer is willing to operate the golf club at a loss while developing the subdivision because the increased profit from lot sales easily compensates for the golf club operating loss. The problem develops when the developer finishes selling lots and is ready to turnover the club either to a professional golf club management company or the residents themselves. Without a legacy of profitable operations absent the developer’s subsidy, the golf clubs often struggle financially. It’s not an easy syndrome to break.