Draft shell. No editorializing yet.
This post maps golf courses across the United States. The underlying point data come from a POI Factory dataset of golf-course locations, which we cleaned, geocoded to counties, and joined to 2020 Census population counts. The prep_golf_data.R script handles all of that and writes the two GeoJSON files used below.
Every map has an All / Public / Private toggle in the top-left. “Public” here means publicly accessible play (daily-fee, municipal, and semi-private courses); “Private” means members-only clubs.
Across the full dataset there are 16,263 golf courses (NA public, NA private) spread across 2,856 counties.
Count by County
The raw count of golf courses in each county. The color scale tops out at 30 courses (any county above that shows the darkest shade).
Courses per Capita
Golf courses per 100,000 residents, using total population from the 2020 Census PL 94-171 redistricting file (via tidycensus). Rather than dropping small-population counties, the color scale is capped at 50 courses per 100k, so a handful of tiny counties with extreme rates don’t blow out the scale.
Courses as Points
Following Kyle Walker’s mapgl dots post, the same courses are shown three ways: as individual points, as clusters, and as a heatmap.