Timothy Davis, a 34-year-old golf pro at the time, began to carve out the Buffalo Tournament Club in Lancaster, N.Y. in 1995 from abandoned gravel pits and overgrown farm fields. He got golf play started in 2005, but only laid the foundation for the clubhouse last December. “We’re building [the club] out of revenues,” Davis says. “We didn’t want to go deep into debt or have more investors, so we took our time and built things piecemeal as we went along.”
The parcel of land contained a hodgepodge of abandoned gravel pits and overgrown farm fields in 1995, The Buffalo News reported, but Timothy Davis envisioned it as a golf course. Davis, a 34-year-old golf pro at the time, was looking to build his second golf course in the Town of Lancaster, N.Y.
“If you looked past the gravel pits and fields, there was a lot of nice settings for golf holes,” said Davis, who had already designed and built Fox Valley Golf Club in Lancaster.
Twenty-three years and 18 holes later, the News reported, Davis is still building Buffalo Tournament Club as his second course. It has been open for business since 2005 from April through October, as Davis and a small group of workers built the course out slowly, using old equipment they repaired.
A nine-hole course opened with a maintenance barn in 2005 and a shed was used as a pro shop, the News reported. And by 2006, Buffalo Tournament was an 18-hole course. In the years since it has operated with a pro shop, parking lot, equipment garage, ninth-hole halfway house and a pavilion for tournament dining — but no clubhouse, despite at least two site-plan extensions granted by the Town of Lancaster.
Davis declined to reveal the cost of his decades-long undertaking, but the Lancaster Tax Department appraised the 195-acre public golf course at $1.3 million, the News reported.
“We’re building it out of revenues,” Davis said. “Most people spend $10 million. We did not. We didn’t want to go deep into debt or have more investors, so we took our time and built things piecemeal as we went along.
“Right now I’m just trying to dig my way out of this,” he added. “There is no pile of money. Friends gave me a small loan.”
In November, the News reported, Davis obtained a building permit for a 3,700-sq.-ft. clubhouse. He and a small team of workers laid the foundation for the building in December.
Lancaster’s supervising code enforcement officer chalked the 23-year delay up to bad timing.
“In October 2006, he was granted a two-year extension due to economic hardship in the area,” Matthew Fischione, the town’s supervising code inspector, told the News. “In 2008, the housing bubble burst, and the clubhouse was never built, but he has done business out of the facility all along. He is currently compliant on all inspections.
“He had a site plan review approved and was ready for [clubhouse] construction in 2017,” Fischione added. “I’m really not too sure why it was never completed. It may have been he was doing it in phases.”
Davis was born in Iowa, the News reported. He did not graduate from college, but he did attend a few, including College of the Desert, a two-year community college in Palm Desert, Calif., and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. At each school he made the football team as a punter and place kicker, but his passion was golf.
“I wanted to become a tour player,” he told the News, “but I was never good enough.”
When Davis moved to Western New York in 1988, he negotiated the purchase of more than 200 acres of land for the Fox Valley Golf Club, the News reported. He and a group of partners started construction, and Fox Valley opened in 1992. It was sold in 1994.
Davis took a hands-on approach with Buffalo Tournament Club, serving more as a general manager who oversees course operations than a golf pro. To facilitate that philosophy, Davis even lives on the golf course in a Cape Cod house built in the 1950s. The detached garage “really should be torn down,” he told the News.
Davis, who also designed the greens for the Links at Ivy Ridge in Akron, N.Y., said he’s committed to completing Buffalo Tournament Club.
“You have to be realistic in your plans,” he told the News. “Have you seen how many golf courses have failed [in the area] in the last 10 years? Westwood [Country Club] in Amherst. Brockport [N.Y.] Country Club was sold at auction. Harvest Hill Golf Center in Orchard Park [N.Y.] was run by the West Seneca Rotary Foundation and failed. Ross Celino bought it for a little more than $900,000 and it did well.”
Buffalo Tournament is a public course that attracts memorial and fundraising tourneys from late May through September, Davis said.
“Our biggest day is Saturday, when we offer a shotgun start,” he said. “Everybody starts at the same time. Saturdays fill up fast.”
Golfers who played the course through the years witnessed a changing landscape as Davis tinkered, the News reported.
“In ’07 we had a tent for outings, but that blew down in ’09, and we built a pavilion,” Davis said. “In ’08, we paved 11,000 linear feet of blacktop cart paths. Our pro shop and restrooms were in a commercial-grade double-wide trailer. We’ve used it for 10 years.
“Clubhouses are expensive to build,” he added.
One year Davis added a golf league, Ronald Ruffino, who has played in a few tournaments at the golf club, told the News.
“It’s kind of hidden,” Ruffino said of the course. “They’ve shown progress over the years; he started to fix it up. The only thing is that the pavilion, where tournament dinners are held, is open-air. If it wasn’t good weather, there was no way to get away from it. That was not a good experience.”
During the season, the News reported, Davis employs 20 part-time workers.
Building or rebuilding a golf course can take years, acknowledged Thomas Ahern, General Manager of Niagara Falls Country Club, a private course in Lewiston, N.Y. In April 2014, Ahern began the process of rebuilding 16 of 18 greens, at a rate of one to two a year.
“Unless you have tons of unlimited funds, you need to plan it strategically,” Ahern told the News.
William Cansdale, Superintendent of Public Works for the Village of Lancaster, has played the Buffalo Tournament course over the years and watched it evolve, the News reported. Cansdale said he was surprised the project has taken so long.
“People come in and get site plans approved, but you don’t have until the end of time to complete the development,” he said.
Meanwhile, Davis said, the golf course gets a little bit better every day.
“The old gravel pit holes are down in the canyons without trees,” he said. “Other holes run through farm fields and have a park-like setting. There is nothing contrived or funky out here. It’s just good, basic golf.”
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