I think the R.E. boom was the worst thing for golf, and still is. Yes, the R.E. market is now depressed, and for most of the country is not coming back to well. Speculators in the home and lot sales thought they'd make a killing, and the golf course was secondary. The CCFAD is a version of the same speculative frenzy, where grandiose ideas of austintatiious clubhouses and amenities along with too much glitz sizzle and hype by the golf magazines selling the club life without the club membership, was too much for the real golfers, the 2-3X a week players to support. Those 2-3 or more a week players need modest fee clubs without all the hoopla amenities to pursue their recreational passion of golf. Any business model that factors in too many amenities, that wasn't a club built many years ago and has had no debt in the last couple of decades, is fine. The ones that fell for the lunacy of chasing amenities and nouveau riche and corporate members in the modern era, overdid it and now are busted or riding the edge.
So, the key to getting golf back on track as a more widely played and growing activity is to make golf more affordable so more people can play. To me that means letting the overbuilt and over sold courses go bust, and let the shrewd golf minded business people pick the bones and downsize the overhead amenities. In a way, and only a guess according to my uninformed actual knowledge, it seems to me that Dismal River may be one example of that process.
I was lucky to grow up in a town and area that valued the ideal of a municipality or even the County or State providing publicly owned golf as one of the ideals and goals of a government that functions for 'all' of the people. So, Madison, Milwaukee and Wisconsin in general have a relatively strong ideal to have done that in our history. That provided a platform for the game to flourish, and when people got a little ahead and still loved the game because they always had reasonable affordable access, they could look to join some equally well structured private clubs, with modest and golf centered + not ostintacious social activities, generally speaking.
If the overconceived broken overbuilt models can be right sized, downsized, and recycled based on redefining the wasted assets sunk into them, we could have an uptick in golf participation, in my opinion. But, it you leave it to the grandiose, speculators and those seeking exclusive enclaves, you will end up with golf as dressage... for the 1%ers, so to speak.
Golf is a recreation, and when it is in the private sector, must follow rational expansion and investment, not greedy speculation with overbuilt superfluous amenities. But, golf is best served and would grow better if more municipal, county and state governments would see it as as important as the park system in general, and an ideal to provide good healthy and social recreation to "the people".