Unfortunately that only works when you live in a place where people do play golf, and where playing golf does not cost a year of your income...
Disclaimer: Never played either just heard positive things about both.
Edit: U.S. cities (no idea about elsewhere)
The only persons I knew that used to play it, were really, really rich (ie: have more than 10 million USD or something like that, that to a brazillian is absurd, I think 10 million USD puts you into the top half percent or something like that, since earning 2k USD/mo already puts you into top 5%)
EDIT: Just checked the Green Fee on the golf course that exists on my city, it is frigging 300 USD, it is almost a month mininum wage.