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.”