Inverness Club

The verdict

Inverness is one of America's great championship courses, and its history reaches back to the early years of professional golf in the country. Donald Ross expanded an existing layout to a full eighteen that opened in 1919, and within a year the US Open had arrived, the first of four it would hold across the twentieth century. Over the decades the course was adjusted by A.W. Tillinghast and by George and Tom Fazio, who added four holes before the 1979 Open, and more recently a restoration by Andrew Green stripped away later clutter and returned much of Ross's original character and width.

For the traveling golfer, Inverness is a private club to be admired as much as played, and one whose relevance is anything but historic: alongside its four US Opens, two PGA Championships, a US Senior Open, a US Amateur and the 2021 Solheim Cup, it has been awarded the US Open again for 2045, a remarkable vote of confidence in a classic course. It is shorter on the card than many modern championship venues, yet it has tested and identified champions for more than a hundred years, and for a golfer building an Ohio trip it is the major championship landmark of the state's north.

The holes worth the trip

Inverness proves that a championship course does not need extreme length to defend itself. It is a tree lined Ross parkland whose challenge lives in its greens and in the precise demands of its approaches, and after the Andrew Green restoration it plays wider off the tee and firmer around the putting surfaces than it had in years. The strategy is set by angles: find the correct side of the fairway and the green opens to you, miss it and the contoured surfaces and gathering surrounds turn a routine par into hard work. Ross asks for control and judgment rather than brute power, and the player who flights the ball and respects the slopes is rewarded.

The greens are the defining feature and the reason the course has held up against the modern game. They are firm, full of internal movement and ringed by run offs and deep bunkers, so distance control is everything and a slightly long or wide approach is punished out of proportion to the miss. The closing stretch has decided major championships, and the famous short holes ask for the kind of committed, precisely judged iron that separates the field when the pressure is highest. With the rough up and the greens running, par is a fine score.

What makes Inverness special is the blend of classic design and living championship relevance, kept and presented to a standard that befits a US Open venue in waiting. It is a thinking player's course rather than a long hitter's, one that flatters good iron play and exposes loose approaches, and the recent restoration has only sharpened its character. For the golfer who values the roots of the championship game, it is the landmark to build a northern Ohio trip around, the major counterpart to the history at Scioto and the modern theater of Muirfield Village.

Where to stay nearby

The natural base is Toledo, where downtown and the riverfront offer hotels within easy reach of the club, and the wider area runs north toward the Michigan line and Detroit beyond. Staying in Toledo keeps Inverness close for a major championship visit and puts the rest of northwest Ohio and southern Michigan in range for a multi day golf trip.

Because Inverness is private, most golfers admire it as part of a wider Ohio itinerary built around what they can play. Pair a visit with the historic Donald Ross parkland at Scioto Country Club in Columbus and Jack Nicklaus's Muirfield Village across that city, or carry the trip south to Nicklaus's Valhalla in Louisville for a Midwest championship tour.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels and resorts around Toledo and northwest Ohio.