OAKMONT, Pa. — There was a time when J.J. Spaun considered quitting professional golf.
Less than a year ago, it looked like Spaun was about to lose his PGA Tour card. He dealt with some health issues and his play suffered as a result. He had an epiphany that inspired him not to give up.
“If this is how I go out, I might as well go down swinging,” Spaun said.
Spaun got back to work, his confidence grew and his play improved. During the first half of this year, he put together three top-five finishes, including a runner-up finish at The Players Championship, falling to Rory McIlroy in a playoff.
Now, after fighting through the trials and rigors of Oakmont Country Club and a 96-minute weather delay due to torrential rains on Sunday, he’s the 125th U.S. Open champion.
“I think it’s just perseverance,” Spaun said during his post-tournament press conference. “I’ve always battled through whatever it may be to get to where I needed to be and get to what I wanted. I’ve done this before. I’ve had slumps before. I’ve had slumps at every level. I went back and said, you’ve done this before. You’ve been down before. You got out of it. There’s like a little pattern, so hopefully I don’t do that pattern again. This is a pretty all-time high for me.”
Golf’s best gave it everything they had all week. But in the end Oakmont proved to be the behemoth everyone expected it to be as the toughest golf course in the world.
After four rounds, Spaun was the only player to finish under par, shooting a 2-over 72 to finish at 1-under overall.
Many wrote him off after he made five bogeys in his first six holes to fall five shots off the lead. But when Spaun was on the ninth tee, the horn blew to suspend play as the rainfall became too much to play through and started to cause water to pool on the greens and fairways.
The delay was exactly what Spaun needed — it gave him the opportunity to reset.
“I thought it was a good thing having a delay,” Spaun said. “It happened to me at The Players earlier this year, where I was struggling on the front-nine. I had the lead going into Sunday, and we had a four-hour delay. I ended up turning that round into a nice fight where I got myself into the playoff.
“All I was thinking was — even my whole team, my coach, my caddie, they were like, ‘this is exactly what we need.’ And it was. We went back out and capitalized. I changed my outfit — I was done wearing these clothes. I just needed to reset everything and start the whole routine over.”
Coming back at the re-start after more than 90 minutes, Spaun flushed his tee shot on No. 9 and he was off to the races. He made four birdies on the back-nine, including a spectacular 64-footer on the 18th green to seal the championship.
“About eight feet out, I went up to the high side to see if it had a chance of going in, and it was going right in,” Spaun said. “I was just in shock, disbelief that it went in and it was over. … Just to finish it off like that is a dream. You watch other people do it. You see the Tiger chip, you see Nick Taylor’s putt, you see crazy moments. To have my own moment like that at this championship, I’ll never forget this moment for the rest of my life.”
He and playing partner Viktor Hovland’s ball were near one another on the opposite side of the green away from the pin. With Hovland away, he went first and gave Spaun a look at the line.
Spaun steadied, found his line and gave it his best roll. The air and the crowd stood still as his ball trickled towards the hole. As it dropped in, Spaun chucked his putter in celebration, ferociously fist-pumped and embraced his caddie.
“I didn’t look at the scoreboard,” Spaun said. “I knew based off what the crowd was saying that I felt like if I two-putted, I would probably win. But I didn’t want to look because I didn’t want to play defensive. I didn’t know if I had a two-shot lead. I didn’t want to do anything dumb to protect a three-putt or something.
“Viktor helped me a lot. It was a foot left of my line. … We got a good line and a good read on the speed. I was more focused on how hard he was hitting it. I knew the line already, but it looked like he gave it a pretty good whack because it started raining there for the last 10-15 minutes.”
Hovland was up-and-down all day and shot a 3-over 73 to finish alone in third at 2-over. Meanwhile, Sam Burns, the 54-hole leader at 4-under to start the day, struggled to an 8-over 78.
He had two double bogeys on the back-nine after the weather delay and couldn’t recover.
“It’s tough. The conditions were extremely difficult,” Burns said. “I didn’t have my best stuff today.”
Scotland’s own Robert MacIntyre, who started the day seven strokes off the lead at 3-over, was the only player in the top-4 to shoot under par on Sunday. A 2-under 68 put him at 1-over overall and made him the clubhouse leader until Spaun’s birdies at 17 and 18 to take the solo lead.
Adam Scott, who was playing in his 96th straight major championship at 44-years old, couldn’t replicate his third-round magic and collapsed off the leaderboard with a 9-over 79 to finish tied for 12th at 6-over.
“No one really had a good score,” Scott said after his round. “I missed the fairway — I hadn’t done that all week really, and I paid the price and lost a lot of shots out there. Couldn’t recover. Conditions were just tough. They were tough from the start.”
Despite starting the day eight shots off the lead at 4-over, many felt world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler still had a chance to make a run Sunday considering his recent success and dominance.
An early double bogey on No. 3 put Scheffler into an even deeper hole, and despite two birdies to finish the front-nine, he never could mount any kind of charge. He ended the day with an even-par 70 to finish 4-over for the tournament in a tie for seventh with Jon Rahm, who ended up being the clubhouse leader for more than four hours after finishing at about 3 p.m. before the weather delay at 4:01 p.m.
“I felt like I did some good things out there. A few more putts drop and I think it’s a little different story,” Scheffler said after his round. “My first three days, I felt like I was battling the whole time. Today, I hit some shots. … It was just challenging. There was a lot of pitch on the greens and you got to do a lot right in order to hole putts. I was just right on the edge today.”
ON TO ROYAL PORTRUSH
With Oakmont now in the rearview mirror, golf’s best now turn their attention across the pond to the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in July.
For Masters champion McIlroy, it’ll be a much-needed opportunity to return home to Northern Ireland after a frustrating couple months since completing the career Grand Slam at Augusta.
He finished tied for 47th at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in May and missed the cut at the RBC Canadian Open at the start of June. Then he got off to a slow start this week at the U.S. Open with a 74-72-74. But he finished off the week on Sunday with a 3-under 67 to sit at 7-over in a tie for 23rd, giving himself something to build off of heading into the Open.
“It will be amazing to go home and play in that atmosphere and see a lot of people that I still haven’t seen yet,” McIlroy said. “I’m really looking forward to it. It was nice to end this week with a bit of a positive note with the way I played today. I’ll just be looking forward to trying to get myself prepared for Portrush.
“Physically, I feel like my game’s there. It’s just mentally getting myself in the right frame of mind to get the best out of myself.”
The 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush is set for July 13-20.
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