“Interactive map” gets used loosely. Worth being precise about what a course website is actually comparing when it weighs options, since the three real categories deliver very different experiences:
A flat photo gallery
No map at all — just still photos of the clubhouse, a few signature holes, maybe a drone shot. Tells a visitor the course looks nice. Tells them nothing about how a hole actually plays.
A static satellite embed
A top-down satellite image, sometimes a plain unstyled Google Maps iframe. Better than a photo for orientation, but flat — no tilt, no depth, no sense of elevation change, and usually no way to click for a real yardage.
An interactive 3D map
maps.golf's standard renderer — available on every course — takes the same real satellite imagery and makes it genuinely interactive: tilt, rotate, zoom, and drag anywhere for an instant distance to the pin, hole by hole. Every course also has the option of a photorealistic renderer, built on real aerial photogrammetry (Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles) — a further step up, with genuine depth and a tilted, tiltable camera closer to what a visitor would actually see standing on the tee, rather than looking straight down at a flat image. It's a meaningfully heavier renderer, so it's rolled out course by course rather than turned on for everyone by default — ask about it directly if it's what you're picturing.
Why the distinction is worth caring about
A flat photo or a static satellite image answers “what does the course look like.” A tiltable, rotatable map answers “how does this hole actually play” — hazard placement, dogleg angle, the shape of the green — the thing a golfer, or an event planner sizing up the grounds, is actually trying to figure out before they show up.