He quit golf. Now he’s playing his first U.S. Open

OAKMONT, Pa. — Please, just wait one moment for Ben Griffin. He can’t hit right this second. The group ahead of him is still on the 10th green but, more importantly, he’s mic’d up and filming a segment with Johnson Wagner for Golf Channel.

He’s laughing. Wagner is laughing. It’s Wednesday at the U.S. Open, and everyone here is happy, happy and optimistic. And why shouldn’t they be? There’s hope for all 156 players in the field right now. But scores start to count on Thursday.

Griffin isn’t flying under the radar, either. Not anymore. His Golf Channel spot is proof of that. He’s signing autographs and waving. One woman points to her Maxfli hat — the golf ball brand he resurrected by winning twice with it this year — and Griffin fires back with a smile and a thumbs-up.

Outside the ropes, one man, speaking to another, summarizes Griffin’s stellar stretch so well we’ll just let him take the wheel here: He won the Zurich. Then he won the Colonial. He almost won the damn Memorial, too.

“He’s having a good year; he’s pretty hot right now,” the other replied, before pausing just long enough to emphasize his final point. “Pretty hot indeed.”

So how did Ben Griffin go from working a desk job as a mortgage loan officer to becoming the best story of the 2025 season, and someone who is now preparing for their U.S. Open debut?

It starts, in part, with a quote from an obituary.

“Hit them long and straight.”

Ben Griffin, who was raised in North Carolina, was always a good amateur player, and he crossed paths with World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler often on the junior circuits. He had a successful college career at North Carolina (one of the best scoring averages in school history) and turned pro in 2018.

For the next few years, he bounced around on the Canada, Latinoamerica and Korn Ferry tours and, during Covid, made a few starts on the LocaliQ Series. He won once on PGA Tour Canada in July 2018, but beyond that he had little success. In four starts on the Latinoamerica Tour in 2020-21 he missed all four cuts.

Then, in April 2021, he played in his final event. Burnt out, frustrated and wanting to start making financial decisions on his own, he went into his dad’s office at a property management company to fill in for an employee who had recently resigned. His mom suggested he try to be a loan officer there, like she was, so he accepted a job, studied and got his license.

“When I stepped away from golf,” Griffin, 29, said Wednesday, under the shade of the Oakmont clubhouse, “I was completely done.”

Griffin was committed to his new life, but he still couldn’t stop his mind from wandering from time to time, thinking back to when he was playing well as a pro. Or even in college, when he was a two-time All-American honorable mention, and in high school, when he won two North Carolina state individual titles.

What was he doing then? And when he wasn’t playing well, why not?

He spent May and June in the office and was getting more and more used to the job and business and change of pace. He ditched golf polos for button-down shirts and jackets.

Then one day in July, he got dressed and hopped in his car to drive to work — and accidentally drove all the way to the golf course. A couple of days later, his grandfather, Douglas Griffin, passed away. Douglas and Griffin’s dad, Cowan, were instrumental in getting Ben into the game.

A passage of Douglas Griffin’s obituary read: His motto was “Hit them long and straight,” having loved golf.

“When I saw that, and after I had accidentally driven to the course, I was like, man, maybe I need to give this another run,” Griffin said.

Throughout that summer, Doug Sieg, the CEO of Lord Abbett, Griffin’s main sponsor, had been encouraging Griffin to give pro golf another go. Now, after the latest string of events — and with Sieg’s promise to take care of finances for two years — Griffin felt ready to return.

“It’s easy to get caught as a mini-tour golfer, stuck like, man, this is so hard, my back is against the wall,” Griffin says. “So instead of that mindset, I had a more forward-thinking mindset of I’m already one of the best players in the world. I just have to go out there and prove it.”

With Sieg helping him financially, Griffin decided to invest in himself. Instead of using a generous gift to just book hotels and cars, what would happen if he bought into his game? He set out to surround himself with all the tools he needed to succeed, to establish a team. More importantly, he decided to work harder. He got to the course earlier. He focused on improved nutrition and training. He was motivated to return to the Korn Ferry Tour as fast as possible.

“The line is very thin out here between being one of the top players in the world or not,” Griffin says. “It can be a shot a round. So I have to wake up every morning feeling ready to go and not give away those shots.”

In November 2021, he shot 71-74-64-71 and tied for 29th at Korn Ferry Tour Q-School. That locked up Korn Ferry Tour membership for 2022 (no more Monday qualifying), where he finished 8th in points to get a PGA Tour card for 2023.

In his rookie season on the PGA Tour, Griffin made 25 cuts in 37 starts and recorded three top 10s. He got into a five-person playoff at the Sanderson Farms but lost, but it was a massive step in the right direction. He had a similar season in 2024, making 25 cuts in 35 starts and finishing as runner-up at the RBC Canadian Open.

Those first two years on Tour didn’t yield wins, but they brought consistency in his play and routine. That, his swing coach, James Oh, says, was important.

“He works really hard, but we have a set schedule,” Oh says. “I could tell you, four weeks from now at an event, where he’s going to be at noon on a Tuesday. Because of that routine and because he sticks to it, he’s not searching. It’s started to click.”

This year, Griffin added more rigorous weight training to his workouts. Seeing the success of brawny major winners like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson motivated him to train for strength and not just mobility. He hired Derek Smidt as a trainer and he travels with him on the road.

Now he’s stronger and can hit it farther (he ranks 70th in driving distance), which has allowed him to hit more short irons into greens. He’s gotten more aggressive with his driver, and the past several months he’s focused on improving his ball speed.

He’ll also credit his short game for his success, which he says is due to the work he put in as a junior. During the 2008 financial crisis, the Griffins were among the families that were hit hard. The family moved houses and left their country club, and Griffin spent more time on public tracks, logging long hours chipping and putting on the practice green (it was cheaper than greens fees), helping him hone a short game that’s been crucial to his rise. Joining the North Carolina men’s golf team came with another bonus — he no longer had to pay for range balls.

“My parents were always there growing up, junior golf, making sure I had the access to continue to play golf, even when we had really difficult times,” Griffin said at the Colonial. “I don’t know what my parents back accounts look like, but I can’t imagine there was a comma. We lost a lot.”

This year, in the first round of his third full season on the PGA Tour, Griffin opened with a 65 at the Sony Open. A week later, he tied for seventh at the American Express. He added back-to-back T4s in Mexico and Florida, but the major breakthrough came in New Orleans.

Paired with Andrew Novak for the team event, the duo won the Zurich Classic, a victory aided by a 35-foot birdie bomb Griffin drained on the 71st hole. It was Griffin’s first PGA Tour title and it came in his 90th Tour start.

“I always knew I could win and I knew I was going to. It was just kind of a matter of time before I would break through,” Griffin says. “But here is the thing about golf. We play every week and it’s 156 guys. You don’t win a whole lot. You rarely win unless you are top players winning multiple times a year. You have to accept the fact that you are going to play some really good golf and finish 5th place and almost treat those like wins. Having that positive mindset is huge, but really getting the job done and getting the first win was huge. It just gave me the confidence I could do it.”

In May, Griffin recorded his first major top 10 (a T8 at the PGA Championship) and a week later he won again, this time taking the Charles Schwab Challenge at historic Colonial Country Club — and holding off Scheffler in the process. Seven days later, in his final start before the U.S. Open, he earned a final-round pairing with Scheffler at the Memorial, a Signature Event at Jack Nicklaus’ place. Griffin finished as the runner-up and pocketed $2.2 million, pushing his season earnings to over $7 million.

The money from this heater has been good, but three straight top 10s, and proof you belong? That’s a different kind of feeling, and it might be even sweeter.

It’s 4 p.m. on Wednesday, and Griffin is finishing up his round on Oakmont’s par-4 18th hole.

A few months ago, most golf fans might have known him for his trademark shades (he has poor vision, so he wears Uswing Mojing glasses) or his social media presence (he has 114,000 TikTok followers, giving fans a unique perspective inside the ropes).

Now, he’s known for his game. He enters this week as one of the hottest players on the planet, is 5th in the FedEx Cup and has vaulted to 15th in the World Ranking. At this pace, he might even make the Ryder Cup team this fall.

About 40 yards short of the green, Griffin stands over his ball with a wedge. Two men sitting nearby watch the action.

“I really like that guy,” one says to the other. “I think he’s going to go far.”

Griffin chips on, cleans the face of his club and walks toward the green. The man puffs on his cigar and exhales, then yells: “Good luck, Ben!”

Griffin smiles and waves. Ten minutes later, after signing every autograph and posing for a few pictures, he’s out of the sun and under the clubhouse. His first-round tee time in his first U.S. Open is less than 24 hours away.

“It’s been an incredible journey, but since I’ve come back to golf I’ve put my mind to being one of the top players in the game, getting into the majors, getting into contention and winning on the PGA Tour,” he says. “I’ve checked a lot of those boxes now, but I have to continue to keep the pedal down.”