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.
“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. 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’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.”
In May, Griffin recorded his first major top 10 and a week later he won again, this time taking the Charles Schwab Challenge. Seven days later, in his final start before the U.S. Open, he earned a final-round pairing with Scheffler at the Memorial. Griffin finished as the runner-up and pocketed $2.2 million.
