The idea of a golf course as a tent pole attraction of a residential development didn't begin in the 1940's, and even predates the Golden Age by a bit. Nearly all of the projects already mentioned in this thread had the goal of making money on the real estate side. Throw in the number of courses built in connection with hotels as a means to attract guests and you get an even greater number of courses built for profit, just not necessarily profit from the course itself.
I'm not quite sure what Tom meant in his statement regarding the difference between Golden Age and Modern projects. Be helpful to get him to expound on that one a bit.
Sven: I know, golf developments go as far back as Huntercombe. But there is a difference between "making money on the real estate side" vs. "trying to make as much money as possible". A few examples:
All of the famous old links were built by guys who wanted to play them, in an era before housing and golf were combined. St. Andrews and North Berwick are lined with houses, but they were just built by adjacent property owners.
Pine Valley has houses. I'm not sure if they were an afterthought, or part of George Crump's plan, but clearly the routing of the golf course took precedence.
Pinehurst No. 2 has houses, on one side of the first few holes. Perhaps the house sales were there to help pay for the land or pay for the construction of the course, but more as a break-even than as the driving force of the project.
Cypress Point could be characterized similarly; The Pebble Beach Company was a massive real estate play, but the land for Cypress Point was deeded to the club with a minimum of housing, and only after someone had done a routing.
Pasatiempo was a real estate development; but Marion Hollins was a keen golfer first, and she'd made her fortune by other means, so she wasn't trying to extract maximum value from the housing lots around her course.
In the end, it all comes back to intent and priorities. The impetus for building these courses was not to make money. Bandon Dunes is a commercial project, but it was not really developed to make a big profit, either; it just worked out that way. Indeed, in my experience, some of the most profitable projects were ones that were not really seeking it, and wound up with a course that makes money because they put the golf first.