To me, this is a given. The question is why......
Golf, once it had spread beyond Scotland, became the pursuit of the aristocracy. The game played which made it's way from the seaside to the heathlands was not intended for the average Joe Jones. In essence, golf was posh, meaning the golf course and the English country garden were never far apart in the psyche of the golfer. Capability Brown may not have been a golf course architect but he left a legacy as to what money combined with landscape looked like, particularly in the eyes of the wannabes.
Transport the game to America and you have a new factor: American Empire. Britain is a small country and, save for some rebellious Scots and Irish, the wildlife didn't need much taming. You can hardly flex your machismo by conquering The Cotswolds. The British then focused their attention on grabbing everyone else's land. Conversely, the growth of the American Empire, painting on extra stars as you went, was always inextricably linked with going west and taming the land. There was more than enough opportunity to demonstrate your power simply by heading west and levelling the land. Little wonder then that green grass, water sources and neat lines were seen as progress.
Skip forward to the 1950's and Americanism had become about far more than simply a dream of owning your own bit of land in the sand. By the 1950's, there was a whole package which included the sanitisation of everything, land included, and commercialism as god. Golf, as ever, had remained aspirational and aspiration and commercialism led to an easy sell to the masses. Of course, with the average Joe taking to golf, the bigwigs had to do something to demonstrate their greater spending power, particularly in a capitalist society where affluence was/is the measure of a man. The Joneses tried to keep up and the rich kept trying to stay ahead. Costs inevitably spiralled as everyone had to demonstrate just how much sugar they could afford.
All that is fine but doesn't explain anything beyond America. The explanation for that though is simple: America, certainly by the 1980's, was not only the dominant global power militarily, it was also the dominant cultural trend setter. Growing up as a kid in the 80's, I can confidently say that America was like a byword for cool or modern or desirable. So globally of course we saw a Trent Jones style boom as articifical courses popped up everywhere. "American style with water coming in to play on no fewer than 154 of the 18 holes" was a typical rallying cry and anyone who argued was apparently out of touch. If you could remove that sand dune, stick a cart path down and put a lake in front of the 18th green, why wouldn't you?
And finally we have the current day situation, played out at my own club at an EGM only a fortnight ago: the members who are close to pushing up the daisies are happy with the links in it's natural form, so are many of the youngest members. The guys who started playing the game in the 80's or 90's are are now the latest generation of newly retired golfers and they have a hard time understanding the notion of less being more, particularly those who grew up with less because of necessity, rather than choice. Remember, many of these guys were baby boomers; Briton's for whom getting out of pre-fabricated council house Britain, buying their own home and tidying the garden was a measure of success. Theirs is a game which ties their own masculine varility with a sense of order and achievement. Try telling them that tidy tarmac paths and 'Augustafication' are all a bit gauche.