OAKMONT, Pa. — J.J. Spaun spoke of being all by himself in March at the Players Championship as he prepared to play in a three-hole playoff with Rory McIlroy. He was attempting to win one of the biggest tournaments in golf. His family watched from home in Arizona.
At the U.S. Open, Spaun, his wife, Melody, and their two young daughters were with him in a Pittsburgh area hotel room.
While Melody Spaun said the mood was quiet and tense on Saturday night as her husband lurked just a shot out of the lead, things got a bit more dramatic overnight.
Their youngest, Violet, took ill.
“I ended up running to CVS in downtown because my daughter had a stomach bug and was vomiting all night long,” Spaun said. “I was just like, 'Okay, my wife was up at 3 a.m., and Violet is vomiting all over. She can't keep anything down.' It was kind of a rough start to the morning.”
Happy Father’s Day!
And it didn’t get much better for Spaun in the early afternoon as he ... well ... seemed to throw up all over himself over the first six holes. He bogeyed the first three holes and five of the first six. He shot 40 for the first nine holes. He was four shots back of the leaders when weather caused a 96-minute delay.
Nobody had shot 40 or more over nine holes and went on to win the U.S. Open since Francis Ouimet… in 1913.
But that’s what Spaun did. He overcame hitting flagstick and seeing his ball bound off the green. He overcame another shot spinning off the green. He endured the delay and actually benefited from it.
Then he birdied four of the last seven holes—including the last two, punctuated by the epic 65-footer on the last—to win by two over Robert MacIntyre.
Spaun, 34, playing in just his ninth major championship, was a champion. It was only his second U.S. Open—he's the first player since Webb Simpson in 2012 to win on his second try. It was also his first top-20 finish.
It was a remarkable display of resiliency for a player who had so little experience in such a position.
And it was done on a beast of a golf course.
Oakmont was an old school U.S. Open, one that required straight driving over the usual bomb-and-find-it strategy. Spaun was not the best at driving but he was good enough. He also had the only bogey-free round of the tournament and he was the only player not to make a double bogey.
While there was some consternation over resuming play in such wet conditions on Sunday afternoon—Adam Scott called it “borderline unplayable” before saying all had to deal with it—the venue turned out to be brilliant.
Hosting for the championship for the 10th time, Oakmont wasn’t tricked up. It was just difficult. Extremely difficult. And the exasperation and exhaustion on faces throughout told the story without a single word uttered.
The winning score was 1 under par and yet there was nary a peep of discontent. It was a stout U.S. Open venue that was fair but tough.
Spaun hit what he called the drive of his life at the short par-4 17th, driving the green and two-putting for birdie to take the lead. And then, needing a par at the 18th with MacIntyre sitting in the clubhouse at 1 over par, he again put the ball in the fairway with a 314-yard drive and—in a steady rain—knocked his approach onto the green.
Nobody expected him to make the putt and, in fact, two-putting would've been impressive, but he got a read from Viktor Hovland and holed his putt to the amazement of everyone on the property.
It was a remarkable end to a challenging championship. Considerable rain prior to the tournament suggested there might be a winning score under par and after more rain fell Saturday that made red numbers seem inevitable.
But the wet golf course proved to be every bit as formidable. It might have been softer, but that rough didn’t get any easier. And the greens, amazingly, hardly got slower.
In the end, there were seven scores under par on Sunday while the two players in the final group, Adam Scott and Sam Burns, shot a combined 17 over par.
Spaun’s back-nine 32 tied the second-lowest back-nine score in U.S. open history for a champion, surpassed only by Johnny Miller’s 31 in 1973 (at Oakmont) and Hale Irwin’s 31 in 1990 (at Medinah).
The Low Am's Unique Roots
Justin Hastings got some curious questions about his home country as he played in the U.S. Open for the first time. The golfer who just graduated from San Diego State and earned his way into the U.S. Open via his win in January at the Latin America Amateur Championship is from the Cayman Islands.
The small Caribbean nation of three islands is located approximately 100 miles south of Cuba. Hastings, 21, lives on the biggest island, Grand Cayman, which has exactly one 18-hole golf course and one nine-hole private course.
And yet Hastings emerged from a place that is not big on golf (but the climate is great) to play college golf at a high level.
“There's a few that have never heard of it, so that's always a funny one,” said Hastings, the only amateur to make the cut at the U.S. Open and thus the winner of low amateur honors. “There are a few that have heard of it in movies and say, 'Oh, it's the tax haven.' And then the conversation goes, 'How did you get into golf,' and I never have a good answer for them."
Hastings came into the U.S. Open having gone 4-0 at the Palmer Cup to lead the International team to a victory over the United States. He also won the Mountain West individual title in one of his last events while playing for San Diego State, where he played collegiate golf and recently graduated.
“I'm lucky enough to have a good support system down there, my coach, Tim, has been really amazing for me since I was 15, 16 years old. He's been running the national team for a while, and he's out here with me, so the two of us have kind of had a great time the last few years getting to where we are now.”
Hastings became the first person from the Cayman Islands to play a U.S. Open after also competing in the Masters in April. His victory at the Latin America Amateur Championship in January came with some amazing perks, including starts in those two major championships as well as another next month at the Open Championship to be played at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.
The only amateur to make the 36-hole cut, Hastings had wrapped up low amateur honors and the hardware that comes with it as long as he completed his weekend rounds. He began the day at 9 over par after three straight 73s and hoped to build on that.
While his final-round 76 was his worst of the week, there was no shame in struggling at one of the fiercest courses in the world. Hastings left Oakmont Country Club with plenty of positives and a lifetime of memories.
“I’ve been reminded that when the lights are bright is when I play the best,” Hastings said. “I think that's something that I carry with me for a long time, it's something that I know deep within me is that when it matters I'm the most confident in myself. So on these big stages when the cameras are on and the people are out there watching I think that's just where I thrive. So I've just been reassured of that the last couple tournaments.”
After next month’s Open, he will turn pro and then immediately join PGA Tour Americas due to his 13th-place finish in the PGA University standings for college players. From there, he has a chance to earn Korn Ferry Tour status.
The PGA Tour's Change in Leadership
The PGA Tour is set to announce that it is hiring a CEO to run the PGA Tour Enterprises part of the business that was put in place in early 2024 after investment from the Strategic Sports Group.
This has been in the works for months, so the idea is not a surprise. The new entity needed a person in charge and various reports last week said NFL executive Brain Rolapp would be named to the position this week at the Travelers Championship.
Rolapp has been with the NFL for more than 20 years and is highly regarded, enough so that he might one day replace NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
For now, the PGA Tour is getting a highly-experienced executive from outside its ranks, something that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said more than six months ago was likely to occur as the vetting process was underway.
How this impacts Monahan will be interesting to follow.
The PGA Tour is essentially two businesses operating under one roof with lots of overlap and nuance.
PGA Tour Inc. is the non-profit entity that has operated the tournaments as we know them for years. Monahan is the commissioner and reports to the PGA Policy Board, which is made up of six player directors and business representatives chaired by Joe Gorder, the CEO of Valero.
Gorder also is the chairman of the PGA Tour Enterprises board which was formed separately last year after Strategic Sports Group invested $1.5 billion in what is to be a for-profit business. That board is also comprised of the player directors as well as SSG members—and Monahan.
So Monahan is on a board that Rolapp will report to? But Monahan reports to the PGA Tour Policy Board?
It will be interesting to see how Monahan’s role evolves over the rest of this year or into next year, which is also the final year of his contract. Golf.com reported Monday that according to sources the commissioner would be “sunsetted” and would go through a transition phase that could last six to 18 months.
Meanwhile, what, if anything, will Rolapp’s appointment mean for the ongoing strife in the game? He is said to be friendly with new LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil, who was on the grounds at Oakmont and earlier this year at the Masters. He met with USGA president Mike Whan at the U.S. Open.
Although O’Neill did not do any interviews, he is said to be keen on working with the establishment to help LIV Golf get Official World Golf Ranking accreditation. Could a new face in Rolapp help see that through?
Whan said last week that LIV has not submitted a new application and that he doesn’t believe it is the OWGR’s role to “walk them through” the process.
But O’Neil has also been in touch with new OWGR chairman Trevor Immelman, the former Masters champion who is now also the lead analyst for CBS Golf. Immelman is just one person and a bid would need to be vetted by the OWGR technical committee and then approved by a board of directors ... which happens to also include Monahan and the heads of the four major championships.
2025 U.S. Open Notebook
- Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz tied for fourth, four strokes back of Spaun, and that was a big result for the LIV Golf member. Ortiz, who was playing in just his 10th major championship, assured himself of a return trip to the U.S. Open by being among the top 10 while also earning a spot in next year’s Masters by being in the top four. He is in next month’s British Open via the Open Qualifying Series as he won the International Series Macau event earlier this year.
- Adam Scott fell to a tie for 12th after a final-round 79, his first over-par score of the tournament. That means Scott is not assured of a return to next year’s U.S. Open, where he could play his 100th consecutive major championship. He is currently 40th in the OWGR and the top 60 get in the U.S. Open. His best bet is try and get in the top 30 of the FedEx Cup standings, another way into the U.S. Open. He is currently 81st.
- Scottie Scheffler shot his ninth consecutive U.S. Open round without breaking par, a streak that dates to the final round of the tournament at L.A. Country Club in 2023. .
- J.J. Spaun became the first U.S. Open champion to begin the final round with three consecutive holes over par.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How J.J. Spaun Flipped the Script at Oakmont.