Michael Greller’s epic Chambers Bay return: Spieth’s U.S. Open, 10 years later

Michael Greller says he’s never rewatched that final round.

Inevitably, he’s stumbled on snippets here and there. After all, the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay was ground-breaking, controversial, dramatic, cinematic. It was the first-ever Fox broadcast. The first-ever major championship at Chambers, a mind-bending new-school links course carved from a Washington gravel pit. The first-ever U.S. Open in the Pacific Northwest. It was also the greatest moment of Greller’s professional life.

So, yes, he’s seen some scenes. Like, for instance, the footage of him and Jordan Spieth sitting frozen in the scoring trailer as a now-infamous three-putt crowned Spieth a U.S. Open champion.

But despite the layers that made that day so meaningful — the drama of the finish, the generations of friends and family in attendance, the decade-long dream suddenly and improbably fulfilled, the national championship on the same turf that birthed him into golf — he’s never sat down and watched it happen.

After all, how could a recording live up to the real thing?

“I GOT MARRIED RIGHT ABOUT … HERE,” Greller says, walking to a specific cement square and turning to face an imaginary cast of assembled friends and family, motioning to his wife Ellie to walk down the aisle as their kids, Barrett and Greta, look on. Ellie laughs and rolls her eyes.

The jaw-dropping expanse of golf course stretches out behind him. Train tracks border the property to the west, separating the back nine from the Puget Sound, and a string of evergreen islands stretch out in the distance, where the Olympic Mountains loom, their peaks still coated with snow.

It’s a perfect June evening at Chambers Bay, warm and hopeful. By 7 p.m. the sun hasn’t yet considered the horizon. I live an hour away and Greller’s much closer than that, which is how I convinced him to pack his family in the car one Thursday night and come take a walk through time.

“I don’t come out here a lot, but when I do, I get goosebumps,” Greller says, surveying the golfing kingdom below. “There’s not a lot of people who can say the best moments of their personal life and their professional life came at the same place.”

But for Greller it’s true. It was 10 years ago, after all, that Spieth and Greller played one of the wildest finishing stretches in U.S. Open history, riding a rollercoaster of birdies and doubles and pressure-putts against the epic dunescape backdrop. It was 12 years ago that Michael and Ellie got married here, with Spieth and his now-wife Annie skipping a big-time tournament to attend. It was 15 years ago that Michael landed his first big-time caddie gig here, looping for a kid named Justin Thomas in the U.S. Am, the beginning of a friendship that led to an introduction to a wiry kid named Jordan Spieth. And it was 18 years ago, in the summer of 2007, that Chambers Bay opened and a local sixth-grade math teacher named Michael Greller decided to caddie there in the summer to earn some free golf and extra cash.

Ellie corralled the kids to find a milkshake and do some homework. I borrowed Greller and trekked out to the 16th tee, where we traveled forward into an ocean of green … and disappeared into a life-changing 3-hole memory.

We made a video of the adventure, which you can watch below; the written word continues below that.

No. 16

“They were both, let’s see, Jordan would have been 5 under,” Greller says, ticking through a mental leaderboard.

From the first step of our 3-hole jaunt it is clear why Greller never bothered to watch the Fox telecast — he’s encoded the entire memory of that U.S. Open Sunday somewhere into his cerebral cortex. He gazes down the 16th fairway, his favorite hole on property, traces Spieth’s final-round tee shot through the air with his hand and then we’re off, down the fairway, tracking where it came to rest.

“His 3-wood … I think it ended up kind of by this head,” he says, pointing to a sprinkler at the edge of the fairway. “And I remember he had a pretty good lie, because he almost could have gotten a drop but he chose not to.”

It’s not until I watch the corresponding U.S. Open replay that it hits me: Spieth’s ball was not kind of by the sprinkler head. It’s the exact sprinkler head. In June 2025, Greller needed only a few seconds to pinpoint where Spieth’s ball came to rest in June 2015 down to millimeter.

Chambers’ tee sheet is packed from dawn to dusk every day but particularly this time of year; we step aside to let one foursome play up and a ball comes whizzing from well back in the fairway, rolling on a line that bisects the narrow green. It finishes just past the hole as its owner, a second-grader named Lexi, appears looking shy but pleased. Her father asks Greller for a photo, to which he gladly obliges: “I’m Michael. What grade are you in?” Lexi’s father can’t help but gush.

“That was one of the best Opens I’ve ever seen,” he says to Greller. Around here, 10 years feels like yesterday.

“It was the best,” Greller corrects with a chuckle. “I don’t know any better ones.”

Once they clear the green we scurry back out to stare down the 20-footer for birdie that Greller says was the best of Spieth’s career.

“I’ll never forget, he turns and looks out there,” Greller says, pointing out to the Puget Sound. “And the first pump, the reaction was as good as you’ll ever see on a made putt.”

I’ve brought my putter, so he lines me up as best he can, suggests a spot to aim while acknowledging it’s “all feels.” I expect some anxiety, putting in front of arguably the world’s most famous caddie, but I feel calm and focused instead. My stroke feels smooth, the ball turns from left to right and carries plenty of speed — but the line is true and it rolls directly into the middle of the cup.

I’m excited enough that I forget about any Spiethian fist pump halfway through, but Greller’s at least as excited as I am.

“I think I’m meant to be your caddie,” he says, fishing the ball out of the hole and asking for an autograph. “I’m going to tell Jordan about that.”

No. 17

“It had been kind of a boring round, and my guy’s not boring,” Greller says.

For most of Sunday’s round, Spieth’s final round had been uncharacteristically smooth. He’d bogeyed the first hole and made three birdies plus 12 pars since.

Then came a wayward 6-iron off the 17th tee, a shot that settled in the long grass and suddenly made a two-shot lead feel much smaller. What does Greller tell Spieth when he’s just made his worst swing of the day? It depends, Greller says. Much like Spieth’s golf, a lot of Greller’s intuition comes down to feel. Sometimes Spieth needs a distraction. Sometimes encouragement. Sometimes talking makes it worse. And sometimes it’s a matter of responding rather than starting a conversation; Spieth can tend to do a lot of the talking.

“Usually when I’m talking it’s between shots, when the mics aren’t on. The last thing I want to do is be a part of the story,” Greller says, then glances over at our camera, instantly remembering why he was unsure about doing this to begin with. “I don’t like to talk about my story because I’m fortunate just to be riding along with Jordan.”

It’s worth noting that at no point during our hours together does Greller take credit for anything Spieth has done. He takes his job seriously and his prep seriously but handles credit loosely. More than exuberance or pride in his caddying efforts from that Sunday, he still feel the stress of the way the 17th hole finished, with a perfectly good recovery shot followed by a costly three-putt double bogey.

“That very peaceful walk [to 18] goes to, okay, I’ve got to really encourage my guy,” Greller says. “You’ve got to regroup.”

No. 18

I’ll remember that walk up 18 for a long, long time, just seeing its significance through Greller’s eyes. As we made our way off the tee, something caught Greller’s eye mid-sentence: The iconic stone structures that frame the hole’s right side.

“I have wedding pictures, by the way, right there,” he says. “[Chambers Bay] will never be topped for me professionally, this [U.S. Open] week — but also personally. I have memories of my dad on a golf cart with Ellie’s grandma. My parents, Ellie’s dad, grandma, they’ve all passed since then. And when I come back here” — here he halts for a moment, his walk and his sentence, fighting something back — “and it’s just like, man. As cool as the U.S. Open was, that day of my wedding day was that much better. And to do it with those people — I come back here and oh, man. It’s still special.”

This entire evening is in some ways about the passage of time. Greller’s mind goes to Spieth, who was just 21 that special week, who’s now nearly the age that Greller was when they first met. But he’s still the same kid, Greller says. They both are. With a notable exception.

“That’d be the one part of Jordan that has changed, is that off the course he’s not just watching SportsCenter at night,” he says, thinking of Spieth’s kids. “He’s all in on the dad duties.”

There’s a plaque in the ground where his tee shot settled.

June 21, 2015
U.S. Open
Final Round
Jordan Spieth
3 Wood

“It was a perfect 3-wood number, just a stock 3-wood,” Greller says. Spieth advised it the entire length of its flight, but by the time it landed, rolled up, back and around, he was left with a reasonable look at eagle.

In 2015, Greller’s walk was rushed and anxious; he’d raked the fairway bunker for Branden Grace’s caddie and hurried to catch up to Spieth, whose tournament standing was uncertain at best. This time around we give him a moment to walk alone up the sun-soaked fairway, but he’s not alone for long — Barrett and Greta come running down from behind the green, where they’ve been eating Skittles and doing math homework with Ellie.

Greta jumps into her father’s arms to be carried the rest of the way; Barrett takes off for an exploration of the right bunker. Greller remembers the two-putt for birdie and Spieth’s emotional comedown in the moments that followed.

“He comes over to the side of the green and he puts his arm on my shoulder and he thinks he’s actually lost the U.S. Open,” Greller remembers. “Because he sees D.J. [in the fairway], best case he’s hoping for a playoff … when he walked off the green he thought it wasn’t enough.”

They headed to scoring, where Spieth signed his card and wondered what to do. They waited there, watching on a screen.

“We were on about a five-second delay,” Greller remembers. When Johnson’s towering iron approach settled near the hole, they heard the roar before they saw it on TV. When he lined up his eagle putt, the opposite happened: no roar. Just how fast was that fateful putt?

“It was unbelievably fast,” Greller winces. Johnson’s putt kept trickling by, just far enough to give him trouble coming back. Chambers has redone its greens since then; they’re a different grass type and look and roll like a completely different surface. A lot can change in 10 years — to a competitor, to a caddie, to a career, to a course.

“When [Johnson] missed the next putt, Jordan and I just sat there,” Greller remembers. “You don’t really know what to say; you don’t really want to celebrate, Dustin is a very good friend of ours, and [his caddie] A.J., we spend a lot of time with them. We sat there for probably 15, 20 seconds and finally I go, ‘Dude, you just won the U.S. Open.’ We gave each other a hug, walked out, Ellie was just outside scoring and then it was just time to celebrate.”

The win didn’t hit him, Greller says, until hours later. His family and friends had trickled off property — so had nearly everybody else. He and Ellie headed towards the parking lot when they decided to take a detour back out onto 18, where they went and sat on the tee.

“We were talking, and I said ‘hey, I just want to take a moment and just let this sink in,'” he says. “Because it was my professional caddie dream just to work this week.”

They looked up at the tent by the clubhouse where they’d had their wedding reception. And Greller remembers the question he asked then, one he still asks, ten years later.

“What just happened? How did Jordan just win?”