The golf courses are a business like any other (although we do have some publicly-owned golf courses around here too). The cost to play 9 holes on a weekday is $10 at one of them. I'm not really sure what you're asking for here.
Once of those negative externalities is water usage. The parent was commenting on the also high water usage of golf courses.
Perhaps that's the connection you've missed.
The proper answer would be to simply charge appropriate prices for large scale uses of water from the water utility, or else this is a discussion about riparian rights and law and possible changes needed to that.
Is that fair? Probably not. But I don't think golf is a particularly inclusive sport, unless you live in a golf course gated community... in which case everyone is included.
On the other hand, if AI data centres all disappeared today, humanity would continue on completely fine.
It takes the limited resources of land and water from a community and sells the result for profit as food or fuel. The vast majority of profit is made downstream and outside the community.
Golf courses being a traditional green place where people gather seems a bit far fetched to me when most of them are elite private clubs.