J.J. Spaun’s career changed at U.S. Open. 1 life-changing move got him there

OAKMONT, Pa. — On the Oakmont Country Club range, about an hour or so ahead of a most consequential afternoon, J.J. Spaun’s white golf bag with red and black trim sat, and he and his caddie, Mark Carens, stood, but there was no way for the 500 faithful perched behind them to know with certainty who was warming up for Sunday’s U.S. Open final round.

The white placard behind his range station was blank.      

J.J. Spaun was a no-name.

But he’d show ’em. Sunday would be what would begin his Wikipedia page, right? Saturday, he exited Oakmont one back of the lead after a mostly steady one-under 69, which was three strokes higher than what he shot Thursday, putting him in the 18-hole lead. From there, folks intimated themselves with the 34-year-old of Filipino descent who was born in L.A., raised on the Dodgers but gravitated to another ball-and-stick pursuit. By his own admittance, he was never quite that dude — be it juniors, high school, college or the pros, where he entered in 2012, won once on the PGA Tour but was stymied from more, for various reasons. (In 2021, most notably, he learned he’d been misdiagnosed as having Type 2 diabetes, when, in fact, he’d had Type 1, leading to weight loss.) Then came this year and the Players Championship. After Saturday’s third round there, Spaun led. After Sunday’s final round, he co-led. On Monday morning, after a three-hole playoff, he was your Players runner-up, to winner Rory McIlroy, and we’d heard his methodology in full.  

About how he’d let golf be golf. Does the thought sound a bit banally cliche? You’re not alone there; Spaun once thought as much, but he and wife Melody had welcomed girls Emerson and Violet to the world and he started to get perspective and all that wishy-washy stuff. But he said he felt guilty leaving home. He said last year he’d now made some peace with golf.  

“It’s not the end of the world if I play bad,” Spaun said after the Players. “It’s not the end of the world if I play great. It’s just golf. … Even when I had my children, it was still like, oh, now I’ve got to really play well because I’ve got to provide for them, I’ve got to make sure everything is good.

“I think that’s where I kind of flipped the switch on my attitude last year where I was playing really poorly and I was thinking to myself, well, this is my eighth year on Tour; if this is how I’m going to go out, then this is it. Kind of in the mid-point of the season, I said just go out and grind your butt off, dig deep, and if it’s meant to be, you can keep playing out here, it’ll happen. That’s kind of when it happened, when I started playing better. I didn’t really care so much.”

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Sunday would substantiate that, unfortunately and extremely so. Some of the misfortune as his round started was his doing. Some was that he was Oakmont’ed. Shot one on hole one sailed right off the tee, which necessitated a hack out of the vegetation. Then, from the left side of the hole, a second hack out, leading to bogey. Hole two was ridiculous. Spaun lasered in his second shot, only for it to take one bounce on the green, clank into the flagstick and carom back, back, back, all the way back down the slope. He, and likely you, head-scratched in befuddlement, and he bogeyed again. “All I heard is like a really loud, ‘Oh!’” Spaun said afterward. “It wasn’t like a good one. So I was like, ‘What the hell? Did that hit the pin or something?’ I didn’t even think it hit the pin. When I saw it coming off the green with that much speed, I’m like, that had to have hit the pin.” On hole 3, Spaun was denied by the false green front, his ball rolling back down, down, down the slope, and he bogeyed again. Three holes, three bogeys. Spaun parred 4. On hole 5, he bogeyed, after his tee shot wandered about 25 yards right of the fairway, requiring another blast out. On hole 6, he bogeyed again, after a tee ball marooned into a front-right bunker. 

Six holes. Five bogeys. Eventually an inscrutable front-nine 40, though on No. 9, the heavens opened up and he was granted something he would practically get on his hands and knees for: an hour-plus timeout. Team Spaun met. As they’d left the range, Adam Schriber, his coach of four years, told his pro this: Let that f*cker go, only the f*cker was still hanging around. “The break was the best thing that happened to us,” Schriber said. “And he’s like, you know, I got all these people that came out of the wood work, filled me up last night, feeling the extra pressure. The first three days, I was just like, all right, we’re gonna see what happens. You know, no expectations kind of thing. And I was like, you can buy into their bulls**t or not. I said it’s like a red line, dude. Right now, you’re blowing the motor. You’re trying too f**king hard. Said we don’t wanna shift early. He’s got a Porsche. Make your Porsche rip those curves.”

And away that f*cker went.  

On hole 12, Spaun coaxed a 40-footer for birdie to fall, its journey lasting some 10 seconds. And he was down one. Down one? As the thousands here walked in the mud, those in front of Spaun on the leaderboard were all but buried in it. Sam Burns, the 54-hole leader? On the inward nine, he signed for his own 40. Adam Scott, Burns’ final-pairing partner? He was a stroke worse. Who wanted this, no one? Everyone? On hole 13, after just a par, Spaun was tied for the lead with four others. On hole 14, after convincing a 20-footer for birdie to drop, he’d led by one. On hole 15 came a bogey and a four-way tie. On hole 17, he was even with just Robert MacIntyre, who was in the clubhouse at one over. 

From 17 tee, the beginning of an uphill, 314-yard, risk-reward par-4, all that matters is sound. Fans listen for club selection — iron thwaps mean you can go get a beer as you won’t miss much; driver pinnnngs mean you better chug. Spaun pinged. Silence. Then cheers. He was 21 feet away. But you must hear what followed, as all 185 pounds spread across J.J. Spaun’s 5-foot-9 body strode up to the green and his ball. 

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His name. 

Let’s go, J.J.! Leeeetttt’s gooo! 

Come on, J.J.! Coooommme oooonnn, J.J.! 

After two-putting for birdie, he was up one. 

From 18 tee late Sunday afternoon, all you could view was dull gray above, a sliver of light green ahead and what everyone came for — a moment, on a fairway that is pretty impossible to locate, below one more storm. A writer more skilled than this one had done their job. Spaun’s first stroke found the middle. Spaun’s second shot found the left side of the green, 64 feet, 5 inches away from clinching a yard-tall, silver cup. 

I think J.J. Spaun is going to win this!

On the green, Spaun and Carens talked of green. They have a bet on these kind of funky putts — $100 — but this one had more topsy-turvy than the nearby Allegheny. But they’d gotten a read — Hovland’s ball had dropped just outside of Spaun’s, and he hit first, missing slightly to the right. Spaun hit. His ball weaved up a slope, then down it. One second. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. 

And seven. 

In. 

All together now, along with a couple thousand others, to the beat of the falling rain:

Jay-Jay.

Jay-Jay. 

Jay-Jay. 

Winner. Major winner. 

J.J. freaking Spaun. He majestically putter-tossed, the stick moving end-over-end, up, then down. Hugs. Tears. “About eight feet out, I kind of went up to the high side to see if it had a chance of going in,” Spaun said, “and it was like going right in. I was just in shock, disbelief that it went in and it was over.” Melody came out with their daughters. Hugs. Some tears. His wife watched as her husband trophy-lifted. During pictures, Carens, a couple beers deep on the green, talked of let golf be golf. Melody had proof. At 3 a.m. Sunday morning, Violet was sick. At 6 a.m., hours before that whole U.S. Open thing, dad was in a CVS. “He definitely has taken the pressure off of himself,” Melody said early Sunday night. “And when he comes home, it’s not automatically Golf Channel on.”

Let golf be golf gave him definition. 

Eventually on the range, his placard came. 

But this was J.J. Spaun. 

“I think when you start to put expectation,” Spaun said Sunday night, “and that adds pressure and you start putting — you just don’t want to have that extra pressure, and you can do that easily by letting your mind wander. What if this? If I do this, what happens? I used to do that all the time. Like, Oh, if I win, I can get into the Masters. If I do this, I lock my card up for two years, or blah, blah, blah. 

“I just started saying like, my career is my career, like whatever happens happens. I’m just happy to have the career I’ve had. That kind of took a lot of pressure off my back as far as expectations on the golf course.

“Last year in June, I was looking like I was going to lose my job, and that was when I had that moment where, if this is how I go out, I might as well go down swinging. That’s kind of how my coach tells me about my golf shots or my golf swing on the course. If there’s a challenging shot, he’s like, at least you go down committing to the shot. Don’t bail one out right because you feel uncomfortable, just go down swinging. 

“You might as well put the swing you want on it, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”