Inverness Club is a legendary Donald Ross design in Toledo, Ohio, that has hosted four U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, and the Solheim Cup. a notably decorated championship venues in American golf, it occupies a hallowed place in the game's history.
History
Inverness Club was established on February 23, 1903, when six Toledo residents led by S.P. Jermain signed the letter of incorporation for a new golf club on the city's west side. Jermain, who had introduced golf to the region in 1899 through the public Ottawa Park course, served as the club's first president. The founding membership built a modest nine-hole course on the original parcel before commissioning Donald Ross in 1916 to design a full 18-hole championship layout. Ross completed the routing in the fall of 1918, working the back nine through a glacially carved ravine that players cross multiple times and looping the front nine around the outer ring of the property. Ross later singled out Inverness as one of only seven of his courses discussed in his unpublished manuscript Golf Has Never Failed Me.
The club hosted four U.S. Opens between 1920 and 1979, beginning with Ted Ray's one-stroke victory in 1920 — a championship at which the club broke convention by inviting the professional competitors into the clubhouse, prompting the pros to commission a cathedral chime clock for the club in gratitude. The 1931 U.S. Open produced the longest playoff in major championship history, with Billy Burke and George Von Elm tied through 72 holes of regulation and a 36-hole Monday playoff, before Burke prevailed by a stroke after a second 36-hole playoff on Tuesday, an outcome that led the USGA to shorten future U.S. Open playoffs to 18 holes. Dick Mayer defeated Cary Middlecoff in a playoff in 1957, and Hale Irwin won the second of his three U.S. Open titles at Inverness in 1979. Two PGA Championships followed, with Bob Tway holing a greenside bunker shot on the 72nd hole to defeat Greg Norman in 1986 and Paul Azinger winning his only major title in a sudden-death playoff over Norman in 1993.
The course was modified by George and Tom Fazio in the 1970s and lengthened by Arthur Hills in the late 1990s. In 2016 the club engaged architect Andrew Green, a specialist in Ross restorations, to research original drawings and historic photography and restore green complexes, bunker shapes, and routing features that had drifted from Ross's design intent. Green returned in 2024 for a second phase that touched every hole on the course and rebuilt holes 6, 7, 8, and 13 on previously unused ground at the southern end of the property. The restored course now plays 7,730 yards at par 71 from the Black tees, with a course rating of 78.4 and a slope of 151, the longest and most demanding configuration in the club's history. Inverness hosted the 2021 Solheim Cup, won by Europe 15-13, and has been awarded the 2029 U.S. Amateur, 2033 U.S. Girls' Junior, 2036 U.S. Women's Amateur, and 2045 U.S. Open.