Sometimes you can get paid for letting someone take the timber off the property, but the money you make generally does not cover the cost of grubbing out all the stumps and roots left behind. I'm sure someone has broken even on it, but rarely.
Getting the stumps out is easier if you use the trees as leverage. I've heard numbers from $2500 to $4000 per acre for clearing and grubbing with that approach. So, clearing a golf course from trees is going to run somewhere around a half million dollars more than starting with open property.