1920 U.S. Open
Champion: Edward (Ted) Ray 74-73-73-75 295 $500
Date: 10/13/1920
Purse: $1,745
Winner: $500+Gold metal
Cut: 64 best scores and ties.
Summary:
The very first major championship played at Inverness Club took place in 1920 when the Donald Ross course was its infancy.  Present-day golf fans know Inverness Club for the thrilling finishes in the 1986 and 1993 PGA Championships but the very first major was no different.

During the Open, Ted Ray of Great Britain, sporting a long sport coat that flapped in the breeze and a moustache that drooped onto the stem of his ever-present pipe, won by a single stroke over a foursome of runners-up that included Harry Vardon, Jock Hutchison, Jack Burke and Leo Diegel. The top finishers and the rest of the record-286-man field were welcomed with open arms into the Inverness clubhouse—the first such gesture by the members of a private club. The players so appreciated the hospitality of the club that they pooled their funds to purchase a cathedral clock for Inverness’ members.

Ray won the Open by a single shot.  It is not a stretch to say he won it at the seventh hole, a rather short 316-yard dogleg left.  To cut the dogleg required a carry of some 260 yards over trees. Twice Ray drove the green, and in all four rounds he scored birdie threes.

Still, he came to the seventy-second hole needing to accomplish a long two-putt to avoid a five-way playoff. As Ray stood over the first putt, he realized his pipe had gone out. He pulled an old, black pouch from his pocket, refilled his pipe, took several puffs and then two-putted for the title.

Thus, as Ray made history, so did Inverness. Although that first Open at Inverness occurred more than eight decades ago, the cathedral clock presented to the Club by grateful professional golfers still stands in the clubhouse lobby and the memory and spirit of the 1920 U.S. Open lives on.   

1920 U.S. Open Results
Edward (Ted) Ray 74-73-73-75 295 $500
Jack Burke, Sr. 75-77-72-72 296 $188
Leo Diegel 72-74-73-77 296 $188
Jack Hutchison 69-76-74-77 296 $188
Harry Vardon 74-73-71-78 296 $188
James Barnes 76-70-76-76 298 $90
Charles Evans, Jr. 74-76-73-75 298 Amateur
Bobby Jones 78-74-70-77 299 Amateur
Willie MacFarlane 76-75-74-74 299 $80
Bob MacDonald 73-78-71-78 300 $75

1931 National Open
Champion: Billy Burke 73-72-74-73 292 $1,000
Date: 7/2 - 7/4, 1931
Purse: $5,000
Winner: $1,000+gold metal
Cut: 60 best scores and ties
Summary:
In 1931, the Inverness Club hosted the U.S. Open for the second time. The tournament came down to a contest between a former amateur standout whose status was somewhat murky and a little known club professional. That duo, George Von Elm and Billy Burke, played an unprecedented 144 holes in an early-July heat wave before the championship was crowned. They played the equivalent of two full tournaments in what stands as the longest playoff in American golf history. The playoff proved to be too much for everyone, including the sponsoring United States Golf Association. Shortly after the 1931 Open the USGA changed the rules to prescribe an eighteen-hole playoff in the event of a tie after seventy-two holes.

The scheduled three days of play--the 1931 Open featured eighteen-hole rounds on July 2nd and 3rd with a thirty-six hole finish on Saturday July 4th—ended with Burked and Von Elm tied at 4-over 292. Von Elm, a first-year pro who had stunned Bobby Jones in the finals of the 1926 U.S. Amateur at Baltusrol in New Jersey, forged the tie with a ten-foot putt on the final hole thereby forcing a thirty-six hole playoff on Sunday.

While the championship signaled an end to 36-hole playoffs, it also offered some firsts.  Burke became the first golfer to win a major championship using steel-shafted clubs. The Open was the first golf tournament to be broadcast nationally—of course the medium was radio. And it was the first Open to be conducted with an “American” golf ball, which was 1.68 inches in diameter as compared to the 1.62-inch British ball that had been used iin previous U.S. events. The weight of the 1931 golf ball, which was experimental, was adjusted a year later to avoid a balloon-like effect that created unsatisfactory ball flight.  But the 1.68-inch diameter was here to stay.

Von Elm and Burke played the better part of “all-week,” and that is why they occupy a special niche in both Inverness Club and U.S. Open history. – Billy Burke & George Von Elm tied If a tie, 36 hole playoff on Sunday; still tied. 36 hole playoff on Monday. Burke won by 1 shot Record marathon – total of 144 holes including the two playoff days.    

1931 National Open Results
Billy Burke 73-72-74-73 292 $1,000
George Von Elm 75-69-73-75 292 $750
Billy Burke beat George Von Elm in a playoff
Leo Diegel 75-73-74-72 294 $650
Wiffy Cox 75-74-74-72 295 $450
William Menlhom 77-73-75-71 296 $450
Gene Sarazen 74-78-74-70 296 $450
Mortie Dutra 71-77-73-76 297 $200
Walter Hagen 74-74-73-76 297 $200
Philip Perkins 78-76-73-70 297 Amateur
Al Espinosa 72-78-75-74 299 $105

1957 U.S. Open
Champion: Dick Mayer 70-68-74-70 282 $7,200
Date: 7/13- 7/15, 1957
Purse: $25,00
Winner: $6,000
Cut:: Lowest 60 + ties 36 holes Saturday
Summary:
The third U.S. Open held at Inverness Club weathered a couple of storms—and the inevitable playoff.

The first squall to hit the 1957 Open came early on Friday during the first round. High winds from the lake caused trees to bend and tents to blow over the fairway and rough. Play was suspended.

Few were aware of the presence of a chubby-cheeked, blonde haired, seventeen-year-old youngster from central Ohio—Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus, considered by many to be the games’ greatest player of all-time, recalled that he birdied the first hole and parred the second before fading to rounds of 80 and 80.  He missed the cut.

After the first two of play, two names were at the top of the leaderboard—Dick Mayer and Billy Joe Patton. Experts didn’t expect either of them to stay there. But Mayer’s game stood up as another Open at Inverness produced an Iron Man or, perhaps, a Fiberglas Man. Appropriately enough, all of Mayer’s clubs were shafted in a relatively new product--at least as it applied to the world of golf-- called Fiberglas, a product of the Toledo-based Owens-Corning Corporation.   

1957 U.S. Open Results:
Dick Mayer 70-68-74-70 282 $7,200
Cary Middlecoff 71-75-68-68 282 $4,200
Dick Mayer beat Carey Middlecoff in a playoff
Jimmy Demaret 68-73-70-72 283 $2,160
Julius Boros 69-75-70-70 284 $1,380
Walter Burkemo 74-73-72-65 284 $1,380
Fred Hawkins 72-72-71-71 286 $840
Ken Venturi 69-71-75-71 286 $840
Roberto DeVicenzo 72-70-72-76 290 $465
Chick Harbert 69-79-71-72 290 $465
Billy Maxwell 70-76-72-72 290 $465

1979 U.S. Open
Champion: Hale Irwin 74-68-67-75 284 $50,000
Date: 7/14- 7/17, 1979
Purse: $340,000
Winner: $50,000
Cut: lowest 60 + ties
Summary:
The 1979 Open offered nothing like the three previous National Opens at Inverness.  Each of them had produced great theater and drama, from the Bobby Jones-Harry Vardon pairing in 1920, to the marathon playoff in 1931, to a hodgepodge of circumstances in 1957 that included Ben Hogan’s withdrawal, Jack Nicklaus’s little-noted debut, a violent electrical storm, and a playoff in stifling heat.

Hale Irwin opened with a 74.  He limped home in the final round with a double bogey-bogey finish that capped a final-round 75, but he, still won by two strokes. No particularly memorable shots, no gut-wrenching collapses, no real drama.

The 1979 U. S. Open, for better or worse, is remembered fondly because of a tree. The Fazios designed the 528 yard 8th-hole to be a classic, three-shot 5-hole.  The Inverness Burn slices across the fairway beyond the landing area.   It has five tough and deep bunkers in the proximity of the green,

Lon Hinkle saw the hole differently.  He discovered during practice that nothing prevented a player from hitting a tee shot through a narrow opening onto the adjacent 17th fairway, then lofting a long second shot over trees onto the eighth green, a shortcut that cut about eighty yards off the intended track.

After several other players following Irwin used the same shortcut, the United States Golf Association and the tournament called an emergency meeting even before the first round had ended.  Concern for the safety of the gallery and the golfers playing the seventeenth, they considered substantial bushes into play blocking any access to the seventeenth fairway.  Or a tree could be planted overnight to the left of the tee box to plug the existing gap. The latter was the alternative chosen.

Wilbert Waters, the Inverness superintendent, was charged with finding, transporting, and transplanting an appropriate tree. Work had been completed about 5:30 a.m. with the planting of a 25-foot Blue Hills spruce which stood looking a bit scraggly and very out of place.

That, however, wasn’t the end for the eighth hole in the tournament’s spotlight. Irwin made birdie at that hole. His drive hit a tree and bounced back into the fairway, and his second shot landed in fairly severe rough. Irwin’s third shot was skittering across the green, headed for the gallery and possibly serious trouble, when it clipped the flagstick and stopped some five feet from the cup.  He made birdie.  Irwin knew by late afternoon Sunday that the difference between a birdie and bogey at the eighth hole during the third round was the cushion needed for his two-shot victory.

The four holes Fazio put in for the 1979 Open have since been modified and are now, to borrow Nicklaus’s description, more in character with the rest of the course. The least affected by the modifications has been the eighth, where a non healthy robust spruce, the Hinkle Tree, stands sentinel over the tee box, a constant reminder of the 1979 U.S. Open.    

1979 U.S. Open Results:
Hale Irwin 74-68-67-75 284 $50,000
Jerry Pate 71-74-69-72 286 $22,250
Gary Player 73-73-72-68 286 $22,250
Larry Nelson 71-68-76-73 288 $13,733
Bill Rogers 71-72-73-72 288 $13.733
Tom Weiskopf 71-74-67-76 288 $13,733
David Graham 73-73-70-73 289 $10,000
Tom Purtzer 70-69-75-76 290 $9,000
Keith Fergus 70-77-72-72 291 $7,500
Jack Nicklaus 74-77-72-68 291 $7,500