Golf first arrived at Inverness in 1903, on rural ground outside Toledo. It was nine holes, a modest beginning for a club that would come to define itself by the biggest tests in the game. A second nine came in the mid-1910s. Then the club called Donald Ross and asked him to make the course worthy of a championship. He finished in 1918. Two years later the U.S. Open came to Inverness, and big-hitting British professional Ted Ray won it in memorable fashion. Championship golf has shaped the club's choices ever since. That pull is the whole story of the place, its glory and perhaps its trouble. Four U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships have been played here. Before the 1979 Open, the club brought in George and Tom Fazio to reroute portions of the course and to build three holes of their own on a newly purchased piece of land. The changes were controversial from the beginning. The new holes never quite blended with what remained of Ross's work around them. They sat on the property like guests who had not been introduced. That Open also gave Inverness its most beloved absurdity. In the first round, Lon Hinkle stood on the eighth tee, a long and sharply doglegging par 5 that was wholly a Fazio creation. Instead of following the bend, he hit a 1-iron up the adjacent 17th fairway and reached the green in two with a 2-iron. Rather than declare the 17th fairway internal out of bounds, the USGA planted a 20-foot spruce in the gap. In the second round Hinkle simply hit over it. The tree looked sickly, yet it stood until 2020, when it was cut down after a storm battered it. "I was somewhat surprised it lasted that long," said David Fay, the former head of the USGA. "It didn't look like it would survive the week." A few other trees still block the line from the eighth tee to the 17th fairway, as if the course remembers. In 2018 Andrew Green came to undo what had never fit. He took out the Fazio holes and put in two par 3s at the third and fifth and a par 4 at the fourth, each one inspired by Ross originals. He rebuilt the bunkers and greens in a vintage style and restored the chocolate-drop mounds on several holes. He removed a tremendous number of trees. The course began to look like itself again, a Ross design burnished to a shine. The work was well received, restoring Inverness's standing as a top championship venue and making Green one of the most sought-after architects in the game. Yet the old ambition never left. Green also built new back tees that will let Inverness stretch to about 7,800 yards in future championships. It is hard not to wonder whether that ambition keeps the course from reaching its full potential, from settling entirely into what Ross left behind. So far, the women and the amateurs have answered. The U.S. Junior Amateur came in 2019 and the Solheim Cup in 2021. The U.S. Women's Open is set for 2027, and the U.S. Amateur for 2029. But no men's major has returned since the 1993 PGA Championship. With the USGA and the PGA of America booking venues decades ahead, Inverness risks slipping almost completely out of the men's major rotation, and no clear reason shows itself. It is an odd state of affairs. Inverness waits, polished and long and ready, braced for a test that has not yet been scheduled.