Banyan Golf Club was founded in the early 1970s by a committee of 15 golfers who raised about $1.5 million to build a private club after their favorite course was slated to become condominiums. They purchased roughly 200 acres in West Palm Beach in July 1972 -- land that included about 80 acres of abandoned shell-mine pits -- and hired architect Joe Lee, who designed the course and famously said of the site, "All you have to do is listen and the land will tell you what to do." The course officially opened in December 1973 and matured into a tropical, heavily wooded layout; a Kipp Schulties renovation in 2018 modernized it while preserving Lee's original design.