Luckiest man alive? After conquering Oakmont, it's irrevocably J.J. Spaun

NBC Sports

16-06-2025

OAKMONT, Pa. – J.J. Spaun's closing pursuit of major glory began at 3 a.m. Sunday in, of all places, a CVS in downtown Pittsburgh. Spaun's almost 2-year-old daughter, Violet, had woken up with a stomach bug, and mere hours into Father's Day, dad duty called.
'Rough start to the morning,' Spaun admitted. 'But it kind of fit the mold of what was going on, the chaos.'
Little did he know then just how chaotic the finish to this 125th U.S. Open would be.
But whatever mean, ol' Oakmont decided to throw his way on Sunday afternoon just outside the Steel City, Spaun would be ready. His coach had made sure of it.
Spaun had long possessed the talent to win majors, one of the world's best ball-strikers who could get hot with the putter every now and then; he just needed to first conquer his mind. Before Spaun's run and eventual loss to Rory McIlroy at The Players earlier this year, Spaun was frustrated by recent close calls, bemoaning bad breaks and wondering if he'd ever ascend into the sport's elite class. That prompted Spaun's instructor of nearly three years, Adam Schriber, to pull his pupil aside and deliver a healthy dose of reality.
The 63-year-old Schriber, best known for coaching Anthony Kim, usually travels to events in a beat-up motorcoach that too often breaks down, but he's also 11 years older than his dad was when he died of leukemia. Spaun, a 34-year-old husband and father of two, overcame a diabetes misdiagnosis a few years back to win on the PGA Tour, and after briefly contemplating retirement last season following a down year, he had bounced back with arguably the best golf of his career. How could they possibly be the unlucky ones? In fact, Schriber posed to Spaun, 'What if you and I are actually the two luckiest motherf---ers in the world?'
Spaun calls those motivational dialogues, Schriber's 'Lou Holtz talks,' coined after the former football coach with whom Schriber has traded wisdom. 'He once told me, either you give your guys a hug, or you put your foot up their ass; nothing in between,' Schriber recalled. Spaun needed his latest Holtz talk while walking to the first tee on Thursday morning. After a few days familiarizing himself with Oakmont's punishing landscape, Spaun's hopes had dwindled again.
'I feel like I have to play perfect golf out here,' Spaun told Schriber.
'No,' Schriber quickly interjected, 'what you need is a perfect attitude. You're going to hit good shots that are going to get f---ed because that's how this place is, and you can either react or respond. You know what you need to do.'
And so, through rain, mud, wrist-breaking rough and a little early vomit, Spaun outlasted it all, stepping over his competitors' beaten remains before slaying Henry Fownes' beast with a 64-foot dagger on the final hole to finish as the only man under par and a major champion for the first time.
'I tried to just continue to dig deep,' Spaun said. 'I've been doing it my whole life.'
WHAT A PUTT!!!!
J.J. SPAUN WINS THE U.S. OPEN!!!! pic.twitter.com/EWdYQeDAzF
The thing about Oakmont is there's nowhere to hide – and it's not just because of the thousands of trees that have been removed from the sprawling property in recent decades. William C. Fownes Jr., the son of Oakmont founder and architect Henry C. Fownes, lived in the clubhouse during those summers in the early 1900s and was known to keep a watchful eye on the course. Fownes Jr. famously said, 'a shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost,' and when he'd witness what he believed to be a crack in the course's defense, he'd fix the problem to ensure that such shots were never found again. At one point, Oakmont had 330 bunkers.
Gil Hanse and the USGA are responsible for this current iteration, with Hanse having recently completed an extensive renovation and the governing body instructing the club to grow 5-inch rough everywhere. With Oakmont's fairways and greens softened in the run-up by record precipitation, such growth was deemed necessary to stymie the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau.
For the most part, it worked, as DeChambeau, the reigning champ, joined several top players – Ludvig Aberg, Shane Lowry and Justin Thomas among them – in hacking their ways to missed cuts, while Scheffler grinded out a T-7 finish but not without a couple club slams. Rory McIlroy smashed a tee marker into pieces on Friday. Corey Conners might've even broken his wrist.
And that pesky Spaun? He opened with a 4-under 66, just the eighth bogey-free round in what has now been a decade's worth of U.S. Opens at Oakmont, and followed with solid rounds of 72-69 to enter Sunday's final round trailing leader Sam Burns by just a single shot.
But Oakmont, of course, still had some tricks for the once aspiring professional skateboarder:
A flighted sand wedge from 93 yards that clanged off the flagstick and back off the green at the par-4 second.
A drive that ricocheted off a bunker rake and into a gnarly lie near Oakmont's famed church pews on the par-5 fourth.
Through five holes, Spaun had carded five 5's and was 4 over – and a mis-club by Spaun's caddie, Mark Carens, contributed to another bogey at the par-3 sixth.
On his way to a front-nine 40 – something no winner on the PGA Tour, let alone a major, had done in the final round since 1993 – Spaun would need a miracle. Carens knew just where to look. It was a year ago on Father's Day that Carens' father, Eddie, died after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's and dementia. At one point on the front side, Carens looked skyward and pleaded, 'What are you doing, Ed? Pay attention, man!'
Then the heavens opened, and it poured harder than it had all week, stopping play for nearly two hours and providing Spaun, eight holes in and now four shots back of Burns, a chance to regroup. He grabbed some food, swapped his soaked Puma polo for a dry one and huddled with his coaches for some extra encouragement. The kick came from Schriber, and the hug from Josh Gregory, the short-game guru who had officially joined Spaun's stable this week, teaching Spaun, among other things, how to better judge lies in the rough. Their message was the same.
'They were just like, 'Dude, just chill. Just let it come to you, be calm. Stop trying so hard,'' Spaun recalled.
Added Gregory: 'I looked at him as he went to the tee and I said, 'Bud, you're a dad, this is Father's Day, you've got two beautiful babies, and you've got a chance to win the U.S. Open. You would've signed for this on Monday.'
Spaun then stepped up on the par-4 ninth and flushed one, a perfect, little cut up the left side. Eddie didn't let him down from there.
'On the back nine, he was definitely there,' Carens said of his pops, 'and we didn't get a bad lie in the rough coming in.'
Jun 15, 2025; Oakmont, Pennsylvania, USA; JJ Spaun celebrates with his caddie Mark Carens after putting on the 18th green to win during the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
Spaun recounted a recent lunch with Max Homa back home in Arizona, during which Homa shared some advice from Tiger Woods, who told him the key to winning major championships was just sticking around. Spaun birdied the par-5 12th to join a five-way tie for the lead, then added another two holes later with a 22-foot make to claw back to even par and take a one-shot lead.
That's when dreams began to wash away. Scheffler bogeyed his last hole to finish at 4 over. Carlos Ortiz doubled the par-4 15th to drop out of contention at 3 over, where he'd finish along with Cameron Young and Tyrrell Hatton, the latter of whom bogeyed each of his last two holes. Viktor Hovland seemed stuck in neutral all day and eventually placed third at 2 over. Burns' denial of relief from what seemed to be temporary water in the 15th fairway encapsulated his round, which included 78 strokes and as many doubles as birdies (two). He and Adam Scott combined to shoot 17 over in the final pairing, with Scott's 79 dropping him to T-12.
'It just wasn't easy out there,' Scott said. 'All things being equal, it's Sunday of the U.S. Open, one of the hardest setups, and the conditions were the hardest of the week. Thank God it wasn't like this all week.'
Spaun's last challenger was a man who, by his own admission, didn't need any pep talks. 'I'm just a guy who believes,' Robert MacIntyre said, safely in the house at 1 over. When he wrapped up his final-round 68, MacIntyre had about a 60% chance to win, per the live betting odds.
But as MacIntyre spoke with the media, a nearby television displayed Spaun hitting two of the best drives of his life – the first one at the short, par-4 17th, where his tee ball raced past the hole before Spaun two-putted from 18 feet for birdie; and the second at the par-4 finishing hole, where he split the fairway to leave himself 190 yards in. The wet turf was no issue for Spaun, whose feet, Schriber says, are his 'superpower.'
As Spaun landed his approach on the left side of the green, MacIntyre finally was able to retreat to the scoring area, away from the still spitting rain, to watch the drama unfold on television.
Most guys in Spaun's position – a former walk-on from Los Angeles who became an All-American at San Diego State and has made over $20 million on the PGA Tour – would be perfectly content. But when Spaun was courting Gregory, he told him, 'I want to be elite.' Another tweak Gregory made to Spaun's game was in his putting setup, getting Spaun's hands higher to fix the arc of his stroke.
With a teach from Hovland, Spaun knew he had to hit his birdie putt on the last firm and with no fear. Schriber once shared a story with Spaun about a 15-year-old Kim, who had just lost a prestigious junior event by hitting his closing drive behind a tree while trying to avoid the water. Kim then said to Schriber, with conviction, 'If I go down again, I'm going down trying to hit it where I want to hit it.'
'I didn't want to do anything dumb trying to protect a three-putt or something,' Spaun said. '… About 8 feet out, I kind of went up to the high side to see if it had a chance of going in, and it was like going right in. I was just in shock, disbelief that it went in, and it was over.'
J.J. Spaun carries his daughter away from the 18th hole while celebrating his US Open Championship win at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, PA on June 15, 2025.
Michael Longo/For USA Today Network / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Spaun's bomb, which capped a final-round 72, wasn't just the longest putt made all week at Oakmont; it was nearly 30 feet longer than anything Spaun had converted all season.
When the ball disappeared, so, too, did Spaun's putter, which was launched into the misty air, freeing up Spaun's right fist to do its thing. As chaos ensued, Spaun then hugged Carens, still holding his umbrella as the two twirled around in celebration before Carens stopped to point to the sky.
'Just to finish it off like that is just a dream,' Spaun said. 'You watch other people do it. … To have my own moment like that at this championship, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life.'
Inside but only about 100 yards away, MacIntyre heard the roars early and then could only applaud as he watched what they were for.
'He won the golf tournament,' MacIntyre told Golf.com afterward. 'I mean, he's dreamed of it. I've dreamed of it. Everyone's dreamed of that moment. For him to pour in the winning putt, nothing I can do. Fair play.'
Once Hovland finished out, Spaun rushed to his family – Violet appeared to be feeling much better – and grabbed his 4-year-old daughter, Emerson, lifting her into his arms as he walked up the catwalk to sign his scorecard, passing over a throng of fans chanting, 'J.J.! J.J.! J.J.!' Streaming down Spaun's face were a mix of rain and tears, mostly tears.
Almost always, when Spaun returns from playing golf, Emerson asks him, 'Were you the winner today?' But not on this day.
Emerson looked into her dad's eyes and declared, 'You're the winner today.'
How lucky is he?