Cinderella stories are part of golf. Usually, though, they involve players, not places.
For years, Inverness Club — a six-time major championship venue and Donald Ross design in Toledo, Ohio — seemed an unlikely candidate to rejoin the modern U.S. Open rota. As the national championship increasingly gravitated toward a small circle of anchor sites and the modern game rendered many older courses obsolete for the best male players, Inverness came to be seen as a relic of an earlier era: a great design but not a national championship stage.
On Saturday, that changed.
The United States Golf Association, gathered in New York for its annual meetings, confirmed that Inverness will host the 2045 U.S. Open, the headliner in a trio of additional championships rounded out by the 2033 U.S. Girls’ Junior and the 2036 U.S. Women’s Amateur. The announcement had been anticipated after reporting by the Toledo Blade, which called the news a “monumental” coup, and a statement by Toledo mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, who said the decision dispelled the “myth” that the Toledo market wasn’t strong enough to merit such an honor.
The 2045 championship will mark the fifth U.S. Open contested at Inverness and the 13th USGA championship held at the club overall. The course is already scheduled to host the 2027 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2029 U.S. Amateur, underscoring what has become a renewed partnership between the governing body and one of the Midwest’s most storied venues.
USGA CEO Mike Whan said in a statement that Inverness provides a championship setting consistent with the organization’s competitive standards, noting its history of staging events ranging from national opens to elite amateur competitions.
For Inverness, the award represents a striking championship revival.
The club first hosted the U.S. Open in 1920, when Ted Ray captured the title in an event notable for featuring the U.S. Open debut of Bobby Jones. Subsequent U.S. Opens, in 1931 and 1957, ended in playoffs, before Hale Irwin won at even par in 1979, two strokes ahead of Gary Player and Jerry Pate.
Despite that résumé — which also includes PGA Championships in 1986 and 1993 — Inverness gradually faded from the championship spotlight. As professional golf entered an era defined by distance and infrastructure demands, the course was regarded by some as too short to challenge modern players, while Toledo found itself competing for attention with nearby major-championship markets such as Detroit’s Oakland Hills Country Club and western Pennsylvania’s Oakmont Country Club.
Inverness’s prospects seemed to dim further when the USGA began emphasizing anchor venues for the U.S. Open — returning repeatedly to sites such as Pinehurst No. 2 and Pebble Beach Golf Links — with championships scheduled through 2044 already spoken for. Against mounting odds, though, Inverness pushed to reestablish itself as a championship stage.
Key to that effort was a 2017–2018 renovation by architect Andrew Green, who reworked the course to better reflect the strategic principles of Ross’s Golden Age design. The project reopened playing corridors, expanded greens, and reinstated design characteristics that had been altered during a 1970s overhaul undertaken ahead of the 1979 U.S. Open.
