Inverness Golf Club in spotlight again at US Senior Open
BY Bruce Young | Champions Tour | 2003 US Senior Open | Preview | 25 Jun 2003
The United States Senior Open gets underway this Thursday on the age old Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, Ohio with Don Pooley the defending champion. Pooley, who had qualified for last year’s event via a playoff in sectional qualifying, shot a US Senior Open record 63 in the third round last year to jump three shots ahead heading into the final round, after entering round three six behind the field. He eventually won a playoff at the fifth hole over Tom Watson.
Pooley has only just returned to tournament golf following surgery earlier this year. He was 45th at the Columbus Southern Open in May and two weeks ago missed the cut at the Senior PGA Championship.
Inverness Golf Club has seen some great battles over the years. In 1993 Paul Azinger won the PGA in a playoff over Greg Norman and in 1986, Norman was the victim again when Bob Tway holed his bunker shot at the last to beat him. Hale Irwin won the US Open here in 1979 when he beat Gary Player and Jerry Pate, although his victory was by two, but two earlier US Opens were won in playoffs.
The Inverness Golf Club’s course was designed by the great Donald Ross, who amongst his many fine design projects in the early part of the twentieth century, was responsible for the great Pinehurst # 2 and more than 400 other course including Seminole, Oak Hill and Oakland Hills. The course has undergone restoration by Tom Fazio in recent years and now measures 6983 yards for this event, a reminder for those that think that US Champions Tour events are played on pitch and putt courses that they are not and carries a par of 71.
Hale Irwin, who would have been the favourite this year, has been forced to withdraw due to back ailments experienced at the US Open, but a field of some of the game’s greatest names will line up.
Isao Aoki, Jim Colbert, Ben Crenshaw, Bruce Fleisher, David Graham, Hubert Green, Tom Kite, Bruce Lietzke, John Mahaffey, Gil Morgan, Bob Murphy, Graham Marsh, Jack Nicklaus, Larry Nelson, Andy North, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Bill Rogers, Dave Stockton, Craig Stadler, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Watson, Fuzzy Zoeller. Literally, a who’s who of the game of yesteryear.
Joining them will be the likes of Lon Hinkle, who qualified via sectional qualifying and whose name goes hand in hand with the Inverness Golf Club. It was here at the 1979 US Open that Hinkle, playing with Greg Norman and Chi Chi Rodriguez, chose to take an alternative route on the par five eighth hole in round one. He saw an opportunity to reduce the length of the hole by playing down the adjacent fairway and did so reaching the green comfortably in two. Overnight the USGA, not impressed with the adventurous deeds of Hinkle, purchased a birch tree that blocked out that route for the rest of the tournament and, indeed, from that point on.
Australians entered other than David Graham and Graham Marsh, who won this event in 1997, are Stewart Ginn and Rodger Davis. Davis’ final round 65 at last week’s Farmer’s Charity Classic will have him in a great frame of mind entering this week’s event.
