Pick a sport: tennis, baseball, football, cricket, wrestling, hockey, basketball, world football, cycling
In each one, players compete directly against, and impact the play of, the opponent. While we have match play in golf, we eliminated our final opportunity to directly impact an opponent when the stymie was eliminated.
It's not the playing the surface of any of these sports that draws attention, except when Henry Aaron was on a career home run-record chase and the left field fence in Fulton County stadium was brought in to increase his output.
No one travels to see tennis court, a baseball diamond, a football field, an ice hockey rink, a cricket pitch, for the uniqueness of the playing area itself. They come to see Green Monsters and Ivy Walls, they journey to see what surrounds the playing field, but not the field itself. They cannot recreate for themselves what happened on that ice, grass, turf, pavement; chances are excellent that they might not even have access to set foot on the playing surface, as it is off-limits for the public.
Wags and wag fans don't sniffle about playing surfaces in other sports unless the momentary conditions (sloppy ice, muddy soil, poorly-laid turf) are such that the contest was impacted.
Home teams exist in all other sports, and within the general rules of the sport, the home company sets up the terrain to benefit its team. Despite this opportunity, no team commits an egregious offense against the laws of the land, even the New England Patriots.
Dimensions for playing fields of other sports remain consistent. This many feet, meters, yards from there to here, and back again.
What sports besides golf don't involve direct contact/interaction/intimidation? Gymnastics comes to mind. Are there others?
Having delineated all this, I return to the impact of direct human competition as the answer to why technology hasn't impacted other sports in the manner it has golf: danger. In baseball and (I suppose, I don't know the sport well enough) cricket, a ball is pitched and batted. If 22nd century alloys were infused into the bats, endangering the lives of pitchers and other players, the public-relations nightmare that would ensue would murder the sport. Same goes for hockey and tennis; if sticks and rackets were enhanced with components that substantially and dangerously elevated the pace of the shot, to the point of threat of loss of life, bye-bye hockey and tennis.
Since golf possesses no direct targeting of opponent, it is free to expand its arsenal of equipment as far as it likes. If they will buy it, we the equipment company will build it. Which sport has non-professionals playing it into their 20s, 30s. 40s all the way to 100s of years? My suspicion is that golf trumps all other sports as we age. Completely connected to age is purchasing power, but let's hook'em while they're young and then they will continue to buy our brand as they age (as long as we contract Tom Watson when he's 65 and 70 and 75 and 80...)
As long as a golf course has teeing grounds (minimum 18) and putting greens with holes (same number) it can be called a golf course. A baseball diamond with five bases, a hockey rink with two center lines, a wrestling mat made out of slippery, congealed gravy, are not diamonds, rinks nor mats.
And, as long as humans continue to explore the outer reaches of inventiveness, the resulting technologies will find their way into golf and golf course new builds will be longer and stronger, and courses built for previous resulting technologies will stand pat and say that enough is enough, or they will adapt, modify, transform, revise or diversify, in the name of keeping up. Golf course architecture and golf equipment: which tail wags which dog?