Even if the equipment was free courses still cost money. If you made the courses free too then you’d either have tons of course traffic or a long wait list for tee times where you could probably only get one weekend round in every couple of months if your lucky. It would also put the maintenance cost for courses on the taxpayers which may not be worth it for how many people the course is serving.
Fundamentally golf has a capacity issue that prevents it from being a sport accessible to everyone. A course can only serve 1 group of a couple people per hole, otherwise it gets backed up. Compare a golf hole to a basketball court that can accommodate twice as many people on less then half the space with little to no maintenance cost.
Even if the equipment was free courses still cost money. If you made the courses free too then you’d either have tons of course traffic or a long wait list for tee times where you could probably only get one weekend round in every couple of months if your lucky. It would also put the maintenance cost for courses on the taxpayers which may not be worth it for how many people the course is serving.
Fundamentally golf has a capacity issue that prevents it from being a sport accessible to everyone. A course can only serve 1 group of a couple people per hole, otherwise it gets backed up. Compare a golf hole to a basketball court that can accommodate twice as many people on less then half the space with little to no maintenance cost.