Living near Toledo, Ohio, we are lucky to have a "local golf treasure," namely the Inverness Club, which has hosted US Opens (1920, 1931, 1957, 1979), PGA Championships (1986 and 1993), the 2003 US Senior Open, and the 1973 US Amateur. They are scheduled to host the Solheim Cup in 2021, and are rumored to be seeking another US Open, even though the USGA is already booked several years in advance. For those who are interested, here is their website.....
https://invernessclub.com/ If you're interested in trivia, go to "Major Championships," and scroll down to the 1979 US Open, and you'll see the famous "Hinkle Tree" being planted. The tall young man gazing up at it is none other than future golf architect, the late Mike Strantz (a friend of mine, btw). But I digress......
I went out to Inverness today to watch the Inverness Intercollegiate, an annual collegiate tournament hosted jointly by the club and the University of Toledo. They always have a representative field from all over the nation, as you'll see when you read the team scores. I wanted to see the course, which has been undergoing a renovation (fans of Donald Ross have been upset ever since 1979, when the Fazio brothers were called in to modernize the course for the Open, and wound up building three new holes). Two of those holes never seemed to fit with the rest of the classic course, and last year they eliminated them and have built two new ones, PLUS eliminated over 500 trees to make the course look and play more like the original Ross design would have played.
Call me old fashioned, but the course looked a little TOO open to me. You could literally see from one end of the course to the other. While that look might suit a links style course, Inverness grew into a parkland course as those trees matured over the years. I imagine some of the older members objected when those hundreds of trees fell! Anyway, it is what it is, and I guess other famous courses (Oakmont comes to mind) have done the same thing.
There were very few people there....It's a workday, the weather was dreary (eventually they had to suspend play due to rain), and college golf is not much of a draw....so I had little trouble walking the whole course, talking briefly to a few players, taking a few pics, and being amazed with how well these kids hit the ball. They look like they've all been taught by the same instructor....great tempos, solid impact positions and perfect balance at the finish. They all hit the ball very high, just like the pros, and of course, very long! A kid from Tennessee shot 68, which is leading at this point. If you're interested, the final round is supposed to be televised on ESPN tomorrow, however, we're supposed to have more rain all day, so they may have to cancel the final round. Enclosed below is
a brief report on the tournament from UT's website.....
https://utrockets.com/news/2018/9/24/mens-golf-play-suspended-in-round-two-of-inverness-intercollegiate.aspx