Inverness Country Club

First Tee: Florham Park's Allan Small taking home lessons learned from US ...

By the time his week was over, Allan Small tried to enjoy the U.S. Senior Open as a golf fan.

Having played and missed the cut last month, he and his wife Patti spent the third round walking around and watching some of the leaders play.

But for a competitor like Small, it was tough.

“It was kind of boring,” he joked last week. “Plus, you want to be out there.”

While the week didn’t end as he had hoped, getting to experience being on the same level as some of the game’s former greats was certainly nothing for the 59-year-old Small to brush off.

During the last week of July at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, Small was right alongside former major winners like Hale Irwin, Bernhard Langer and Mark O’Meara.

“The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is the fun part,” said Small. “Monday’s practice round with Loren Roberts and a couple guys that were real nice. (On) Tuesday, I played with Tom Lehman, and then Wednesday we had a big amateur match with some guys. So it was really a lot of fun.”

This was the second time that Small competed for the Senior Open.

His first one — back in 2006 at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Kansas — was much more a whirlwind week.

Getting acclimated to the pace and demand of everything was a bit of a eye-opener for the mild-mannered Small.

But this time around? Much more enjoyable.

“The goal is to be fresh Thursday,” said Small, who will turn 60 next month. “There’s a lot of time to kill though, so you try and go practice little things because you don’t want to bust yourself either. I really had to make sure that I only would practice for an hour and a half and then find something else to do. Because you can spend the whole day there at the range.”

He struggled on day one of the tournament, shooting an 8-over 79. But he rebounded in Friday’s second round to shoot a 4-over 75. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as he finished 10 shots below the cut line.

The Florham Park resident was able to find a bit of humor in his missed cut. Because of storms that delayed the finish of the second round, Small had to come back on Saturday to play his final hole of the round and finish the tournament.

“Friends of mine were kidding me that I finally got to play on the weekend in this thing,” he said, laughing.

Historic Inverness Country Club wants another U. S. Open

The U. S. Senior Open to be held at Inverness Country Club July 28-31 is the second Champions Tour event to be held at the historic course.  It also hosted the 2003 U. S. Senior Open won by Bruce Lietzke.  Tom Watson finished just two shots back and only three players were able to better par for the week.  Inverness members see their facility as much more than Champions Tour venue, however.  They are hoping that this year’s tournament is a preview of a return of the U. S. Open to Inverness.

Inverness has been the site of four U. S. Opens.  The 1920 Open was the maiden appearance for eighteen year old golf prodigy, Bobby Jones, and the 1931 Open was his last appearance in tournament competition after winning the “Grand Slam of Golf” the year before.  The 1957 field included another golfing prodigy, a little known, pudgy, blonde haired, long hitter from Columbus, Jack Nicklaus.  Hale Irwin won the 1979 Open which is remembered as the year that the famous “Hinkle Tree” was added to the par five 8 fairway to create an easier approach shot to the green.

Donald Ross is credited as designing Inverness although local legend gives much of the credit for the overall design to S. P. Germain, who had designed and built Ottawa Hills Golf Club in 1899.  The course has been lengthened and updated over the years and meets the requirements for today’s long hitting professional golfers.  Inverness has an exemplary history and is one of the greatest classic golf courses in the United States.  In addition to the four U. S. Opens and two U. S. Senior Opens, Inverness has hosted two PGA Championships, and the U. S. Amateur in 1973.

Some questions persist for the USGA to grant Inverness another shot at a big boy tournament.  Can Inverness handle the huge crowds that come to watch the greatest golfers in the world ply their craft?  A course rerouting for this year’s Senior Open should answer that question and create wider alleys for the fans to move easily about the grounds and provide sufficient viewing areas.

The course itself is the star in the equation and the rerouting has yielded a surprise to the extent that holes #13 to #18 will contain four par 4’s in excess of 450 yards and a 228 yard par 3.  The “Back 9” will be a severe test for the leaders on Sunday afternoon and should provide tremendous drama for the golf fan watching the event.  The course will play to 7,143 yards for the Senior Open and could probably be stretched to nearly 7,500 yards for an Open.  The normal date for the tournament is in the middle of June over the Father’s Day weekend.  That time of the year would assure that Inverness is firm and fast making the rolling, tight fairways and the small undulating greens be their most challenging.  Want total risk/reward?  How about shortening #18 to a 325 yard driveable par 4.

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