Trading Steel for Glass

After spending more than 18 years at Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club in the shadows of Pittsburgh, the Steel City, John Zimmers is making the move to the Inverness Club in the Glass City, Toledo, Ohio.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity in a wonderful area, and the design and architecture of it is a really, really great golf course,” says Zimmers. “It’s kind of neat and it’s going to be a new chapter and a new challenge for me. I think that I can bring a lot of things to the course.”

The fingerprints of legendary golf architects are all over the Inverness Club. Donald Ross completed its original design in 1918, and renovations were later led by A.W. Tillinghast in 1920, and George and Tom Fazio in 1978. Not to mention Byron Nelson served as the club’s head professional in the 1940s.

Inverness has hosted nine major championships in its history, including the U.S. Open in 1920, 1931, 1957 and PGA Championship in 1986 and 1993. Zimmers, host of four major championships while at Oakmont, will have the chance to host the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur and the 2021 Solheim Cup.

Zimmers says he is “very excited” for this new chapter in his life, but making the decision to leave Oakmont is not an easy one for the native-Pennsylvanian.

“It’s always a difficult decision when you’re leaving a place like Oakmont that you’ve been at for 18 years. You become emotionally attached to the golf course, to the staff and the membership,” says Zimmers. “It’s clearly been an honor to take care of such a historic place like that. There’s a lot of emotion involved.”

Photo: As interview by Seth Jones, March 9, 2017.