Cinderella stories are part of golf. However, they usually involve players, not places.
For years, the Inverness Club — the site of a six-time major championship and the design of Donald Ross in Toledo, Ohio — seemed unlikely to join the modern US Open rota. With the national championship increasingly concentrated in a narrow circle of focal points and the modern game rendering many of the old courses obsolete for the best male players, Inverness was seen as a relic of a bygone era: great design but not national championship class.
On Saturday, that changed.
The United States Golf Association, gathered in New York for its annual meetings, confirmed that Inverness will host the 2045 US Open, the main event in the third additional tournament joined by the 2033 US Girls’ Junior and the 2036 US Women’s Amateur. This announcement was expected after it was reported by The Toledo Bladewhich called the news a “monument” of the coup, and a statement from Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, who said the decision dispelled the “myth” that the Toledo market was not strong enough to deserve such an honor.
The 2045 tournament will mark the fifth US Open tournament held at Inverness and the 13th USGA tournament held at the club overall. The course is already slated to host the 2027 US Women’s Open and the 2029 US Amateur, underscoring what has become a renewed relationship between the governing body and one of the Midwest’s storied venues.
USGA CEO Mike Whan said in a statement that Inverness provides a tournament setting that meets the organization’s competitive standards, noting its history of stage events from national openings to elite amateur tournaments.
For Inverness, the award represents a remarkable renaissance in the sport.
The club first hosted the US Open in 1920, when Ted Ray took the title in a notable event by marking the US Open debut of Bobby Jones. The next US Opens, in 1931 and 1957, ended in playoffs, before Hale Irwin won even par in 1979, two strokes ahead of Gary Player and Jerry Pate.
Despite that resume – which also included PGA Championships in 1986 and 1993 – Inverness gradually faded from championship visibility. As professional golf enters an era defined by distance and infrastructure requirements, the course has been considered by some to be too short to challenge modern players, while Toledo has found itself competing for attention with larger nearby markets such as Detroit’s Oakland Hills Country Club and Pennsylvania’s Oakmont Country Club in the west.
Inverness’s hopes looked even dimmer when the USGA began emphasizing the US Open’s focus areas – returning more often to sites like Pinehurst No. 2 and Pebble Beach Golf Links – with tournaments scheduled for 2044 already. However, against mounting odds, Inverness pushed on to re-establish themselves as a Championship side.
Central to that effort was a 2017–2018 renovation by architect Andrew Green, who reworked the course to better reflect the strategic goals of Ross’s Golden Age design. The project also opened up the fairways, expanded the greens, and restored design features that had been altered during the 1970s renovations done before the 1979 US Open.
The changes helped to reshape ideas. Inverness hosts the 2019 US Junior Amateur and the 2021 Solheim Cup. Then came the USGA’s decision to award the club the 2029 US Amateur. There were growing indications that the course had returned to the status of a governing body.
The latest announcement extends that line while bringing an important moment to Toledo, a Rust Belt city hit hard by a shrinking industrial economy and decades-long population decline.
Saturday’s news is yet another notch in Ohio’s golf belt. By 2025, the state will host 41 USGA tournaments in total, among the highest in the country.
The Inverness announcement came as part of a broader slate of future championship site selections unveiled by the USGA. The National Golf Links of America on Long Island will host the 2040 Walker Cup, while Cypress Point Club in California is slated to host the 2042 Curtis Cup and 2048 Walker Cup. Seminole Golf Club in Florida was awarded the 2046 Curtis Cup and 2052 Walker Cup.
