OAKMONT, Pa. — On Sundays at majors, players get revealed. At a U.S. Open, most especially. And when the U.S. Open is at Oakmont — the most challenging course in the U.S. Open rotation — that becomes even more true. You can take your range game to the course on Thursday and Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, if you’re going to win, you’re going to need more than range perfection. Enter character.
J.J. Spaun showed his U.S. Open character on his second shot on the 2nd hole on Sunday. That’s when he showed his true self, that he had what was necessary to win this soggy slog-fest, to win at the course where Larry Nelson and Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan won Opens. Talk about tough men. What Spaun did on the second shot of the 2nd hole shows how much he much he deserves to round out that foursome.
Arriving at Oakmont, Spaun — 34, married, father of two — was best known for losing to Rory McIlroy in a playoff at the Players Championship three months ago. He had won one PGA Tour event, the Texas Open, three years ago. This Open was the second U.S. Open of his career. He was trailing by a shot through three rounds and playing on Sunday with Viktor Hovland, in the day’s penultimate pairing. He made a bogey on the 1st. If he had shot 77, would you have been shocked?
Spaun hit a 3-wood right down the middle on the short (352 yards) par-4 2nd. He had 94 yards to a back pin. His caddie, Mark Carens — bucket hat, grayish beard, long white shorts — assumed the catcher’s position, unusually close to his player, and holding on to Spaun’s golf bag like it was a life preserver. The shot was perfect: closed stance, speed through the ball, dollar-bill divot, low, spinning, driving flight into a warm breeze. The shot was bound for the black-and-white flagstick from the get-go.
Spaun’s Srixon ball bounced once, maybe six feet in front of the hole. And then it clanked right off the near-middle of the fiberglass flagstick, maybe a half-inch in diameter. What are the chances?
The fans ringing the green could hear it and see it. The greenside mics picked up the striking sound and the fan response. The ball rolled for nearly 30 seconds, down the sloping green, off it and to the collar, back on to the green, then off the fairway, heading for a sea of filled divot holes from the Open’s first round.
You might recall when Tiger Woods hit the flagstick on the 15th hole in the second round of the 2013 Masters. For take-dead-aim accuracy, Spaun’s shot was about the same.
That was when Spaun showed he has what it takes to win this national championship: He didn’t say a single thing. He didn’t stomp his feet. He didn’t turn away. He just stared at the ball, from start to finish, all through that half-minute. He scratched his head for a quick second through his blue baseball cap. That was it.
For his third shot, he had a 50-yard pitch, instead of a five-foot birdie putt. He might have made 3. He made 5. A bogey-bogey start. He was well on his way to 77.
The stoicism Spaun showed in response to that shot brought to mind Tom Watson at the 1984 British Open in St. Andrews. On Sunday, on the 17th hole, Watson, in the last twosome, trying to win his sixth Open and his first at the Old Course, shoved his second shot, pretty much ending his chances to win. Watson hit a poor shot, whereas Spaun’s was outstanding. And Watson didn’t win, and Spaun of course did. But the similarity is that Watson just stood there and took it. That’s what Spaun did. There’s more than one way to play golf, but a tough core, as both men showed, will always help on Sundays at majors. Especially in U.S. Opens. Most particularly when they are at Oakmont.
Here is Spaun’s post-round play-by-play of the shot:
“We had 100 yards maybe, maybe less. It was like a perfect kind of flighted, chipped sand wedge, which is what the shot called for, because it’s straight into the wind, and [the green] was soft. I hit it perfect, and it was right at it. It was just a matter of was it the perfect distance or not?
“All I heard is like a really loud like, ‘Ohhhhh!’ It wasn’t like a good Oh. So I was like, ‘What the hell? Did that hit the pin or something?’ I didn’t even think it did.
“When I saw it coming off the green with that much speed, I’m like, `That had to have hit the pin.’
“Then I’m walking up there, fixing my pitch mark and everyone was like, `It hit the pin!’
“During the rain delay, I watched it and it was just really unlucky. That was pretty much a two-shot swing. I was thinking, ‘That would have been pretty close, maybe inside of five feet, if it didn’t hit the flag.’ Yeah — not a good start to the day.”
And how did he explain his stoic response?
“It was so early on in the round that I couldn’t let my attitude or any frustration get to me,” he said.
Tough man, strong response. It made all the difference.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
Michael Bamberger
Golf.com Contributor
Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.
