A top golf course in Toledo, Ohio, is notable for its extensive efforts to make the club great in terms of both design and conditioning.

Rain Bird helped them get there.

Introduction

When John Zimmers came to Toledo’s historical Inverness Club after two U.S. Opens and a Women’s Open at Oakmont, he was ready for a new challenge: “Change can be good,” he says. “This club really needed to take a few steps forward, but I felt like the history and bones of the place were a good fit for me.”

The club was committed to achieving a new level of excellence and wanted to invest in the future by renovating and restoring the century-old Donald Ross design. “I knew there was a great opportunity here, but we had to build on what had already been started to restore the club’s confidence.”

The club checks all the boxes for a legendary course. Inverness golf course was founded in 1903 and is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark. Staff famously let the pros use the club locker room in 1920, and the players bought the club a grandfather clock in gratitude. “It still chimes to this day in the clubhouse,” Zimmers says. The USGA Green Section was also founded at the club that same year. “It’s a great, historic club that’s kind of a hidden gem,” he says. “But everyone who comes here loves it.”

The club hosted the Solheim Cup in 2021, and they have two USGA championships upcoming: the U.S. Women’s Open in 2027 and the U.S. Amateur in 2029. It’s no secret that they’d like to host more major championships someday, now that the management team has worked hard to take it to the next level.

So what steps does Zimmers recommend to elevate a golf course like Inverness to its desired level of excellence?

Make the Case for a New Irrigation System

When Zimmers arrived in 2017, a new irrigation system wasn’t a top priority. “The old system was still pretty functional.” During the first round of renovation with Andrew Green in 2017, a few holes were changed, along with some new bunkering and the addition of a lot of fescue. Over the next few years, the team also removed trees and prepared for the final phase of renovation in 2023–2024.

Part of that preparation was making the case for a new golf course irrigation system. How did Zimmers build consensus for the investment?

“We had to educate the grounds committee, the membership, and the board. The message was simple: ‘We need to be able to put water where we want to put water.’ It wasn’t like we couldn’t manage things with what we had, but the club wanted to do it right and provide us with the resources to create the best possible playing conditions.”

He says the real story was that club leadership was committed to making the turf as good as it could be. “So being able to put water exactly where we need it and also conserving as much as possible to stay sustainable really led to our new Rain Bird system.”

How did he communicate with members about it?

“We tried not to overthink it or over-inform them,” Zimmers recalls. “Too much technical stuff can be problematic. The upcoming championships also drove it.”

Making the decision came down to simple, face-to-face communication out on the course. “The most important thing we did was to go out on the course and look at the impacts of the old system and talk about it. We asked those key members, ‘Okay, Mr. Smith, what do you want to water tonight?’ We showed them how a single sprinkler was watering both the fairway and the rough. We didn’t have a choice between the two with the old golf course irrigation system, and we had to make those kinds of choices every day. They immediately grasped that it wasn’t an optimal way to do it.”

The team redid the first hole with new Rain Bird heads and demonstrated how they could water anywhere efficiently. “We put it in terms they understood,” says Zimmers.

The new two-wire irrigation system was very compelling as well. “We showed them that the technology had changed, and you don’t have to have a wire to go to every head and route through boxes to manage more than 2,000 heads. We showed them how it was a spaghetti nightmare inside those boxes and how any of those wires could cause a problem.”

Showing the new Rain Bird technology installed on #1 sealed the deal for members. “We showed them how much simpler the new technology was.” Seeing it at work first-hand made a big difference in the education process.

Compare Irrigation Systems and Choose One That Will Deliver

The leadership of Inverness now knew that a new golf course irrigation system would help the agronomy team create a better product, make fairways firmer, keep unwanted water out of the fescue areas, and improve the playability of the rough. “They decided that this is the time, and a new system made sense,” says Zimmers. “It makes you feel good, but there’s also some pressure when they give you the green light. Now we have to deliver.”

They knew the layout of the system they wanted for better golf course water management. The next question was which system to choose and how do you pick? “We went through the process,” says Zimmers. “I’d used both systems in the past, and I knew there were a few differences. For example, I felt like the Rain Bird heads performed very well. There’s less maintenance in terms of holding its part-circle or arcs. There’s just a little more flexibility.”

But they still executed the process the right way with the help of irrigation consultant Mike Kuhn to make sure they’d compared everything thoroughly. “He helped us analyze the whole thing and used his expertise to make sure our likes and dislikes were followed,” says Zimmers. “For example, we didn’t want any heads in the middle of the approaches; we wanted to make sure we could meet the demands of future tournaments and so on. He did a great job of taking us through the process.”

What drove the final decision? “At the end of the day, you think about who we’re working with and who’s giving us the support we need. We concluded it was just in our best interest to go with Rain Bird.”

Why? “The system itself seems to be more capable, simpler to understand, and easier to run. And we think that if we ever want to add onto it in the future, we have the flexibility to do that.”

The simplicity of the two-wire irrigation system compared to the boxes that come along with other brands also had an impact on the choice. “Golf has changed a bit. We removed a lot of trees and exposed a lot of those boxes, so it’s a visual thing. But it’s also a maintenance thing. When they’re exposed, there seem to always be fuses, corrosion, and weather challenges. We wanted to avoid that.”

Use Trusted Professionals To Install the New Irrigation System

Heritage Golf and Zimmers’ team started the installation for the golf course restoration in April 2024 with a plan to get the work around the clubhouse done quickly. “We started with valve work and main lines to feed out to the course. We mapped it out and explained it to the members. Our plan was to start at the clubhouse and work our way away from it. It was less challenging for all the member activities and parking and such.”

What did Zimmers learn from the installation? “One of the things that worked well was doing a weekly communication to the membership to let them know where we would be working and what was happening. We never closed the golf course once. They played the entire time. We’d close one hole for work, but we have an extra hole, so they were still able to play 18.

“I also really have to give credit to SiteOne’s team and Mike Kuhn, our irrigation consultant,” Zimmers says. “It’s more challenging for everyone when you’re still open for golf, but the team did a great job of working around that. It took everyone, plus our members, to make this happen. The membership at Inverness Golf Club is just great. They really believe in friendship and hospitality and that shined through during this project.”

Since the old system wasn’t ancient, they used a combination of existing main lines and new ones. They ended up with about 2,000 Rain Bird heads. They were also able to use the existing pump station from 2018, and the process was finished in just a few months.