Why would you consider that as “being wasted”? Personally, while I was once a pretty serious golfer, it’s been many years since that was true (and of course my disability has pretty much put the kibosh on that anyway), but there are a lot of people out there who love the game, and spend lots of money on it. And it doesn’t require tremendous amounts of wealth, either.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve always heard that Florida has more golf courses than the rest of the planet combined, our economy is very tourist driven, people like to play golf while on vacation, so it does make sense that it might be.