OAKMONT, Pa. — Reality crashed seconds after J.J. Spaun had hurled his putter and danced with his caddie, after he'd pumped his fist toward the roaring gallery as a serpentine 64-footer found the bottom of Oakmont's 18th cup to claim the national championship. These were the visceral, primal reactions conjured only when lightning strikes and the bolt had been delivered by your fingers. But adrenaline surrenders to emotion, and as Spaun stepped off the green, he wiped at the moisture streaming down his face—water that had been falling for three hours, though now he realized it wasn't rain but tears from within. He ducked his head, futilely trying to hide from the cameras what everyone could already see: a man who had just accomplished what no one believed possible, including himself.
Against a brutal start, arguably golf's most unforgiving venue, punishing weather and a leaderboard of formidable contenders, Spaun prevailed through sheer determination in one of the most chaotic final rounds in recent major championship memory. For that unlikely triumph, Spaun is the 2025 United States Open champion.
“It just felt like, as bad as things were going, I still tried to just commit to every shot. I tried to just continue to dig deep,” Spaun said afterward, trying to explain the seemingly unexplainable. “I've been doing it my whole life.”
Where to start? Perhaps when time itself paused, because that interruption sparked this fight. Spaun stumbled from the opening bell—five consecutive 5s to begin his round. There was cruel luck: finding a divot in the fairway, striking the flagstick at the second only to watch his ball ricochet 50 yards off the green, leaving Spaun scratching his head in disbelief. Combined with a series of brutal lies in Oakmont's unforgiving rough, it appeared Spaun had fallen victim to one of those cursed days when Murphy's Law reigns supreme.
And frankly, it’s OK to think Spaun was nothing more than a bystander to begin with. At 34, Spaun has endured nearly a decade navigating tour life's brutal arithmetic. "Journeyman" feels dismissive for someone who has sustained a career at this level, yet his résumé tells the sport's harsh truth: one victory in 235 previous starts, two lost tour cards, never a sniff of the Tour Championship. Professional golf's margins between relevance and obscurity are razor-thin, and the sport's grandest prizes typically gravitate toward its marquee names. You'd be forgiven for assuming he wasn't destined for major championship glory.
Then the heavens opened. A torrential storm swept through western Pennsylvania—the kind that raised questions about whether the round could be completed and why officials hadn't moved up tee times. That deluge gave Spaun, then five over through eight holes and four shots behind leader Sam Burns, a gift: more than 90 minutes to regroup and reset. Still, after limping to a front-nine 40, Spaun would need something approaching perfection, plus considerable help from his competitors, to climb into contention.
Spaun delivered his end of the bargain. He steadied himself with three solid pars after the restart as rain continued, then ignited his comeback when a rolling 40-footer found the cup for birdie at the 12th. Providence smiled on him as Burns and Adam Scott both butchered the 11th, suddenly pulling this U.S. Open into a five-way deadlock as the field battled the elements, the course, and each other. Spaun seized another birdie at the short 14th to briefly claim the lead, only to surrender it with yet another bogey.
But his competitors crumbled, nearly all struggling to recalibrate after the weather interruption. Burns pleaded for relief from standing water at the 15th but was denied twice by officials. His approach from the waterlogged turf sailed wide left, leading to double bogey. There was Scott, the sentimental crowd favorite entering the day, but he never appeared comfortable and imploded over the final five, playing them in five over par to tumble outside the top 10. Carlos Ortiz doubled the 15th and never recovered his footing. Tyrrell Hatton watched his chances dissolve when his drive at the drivable 17th found the treacherous downslope of a greenside bunker, leading to a devastating 5 on a hole where others were carding 3s. The only man left standing between Spaun and glory was Robert MacIntyre, who had mounted a furious back-nine charge from seven shots behind to pull within one. But his birdie attempt from across the 18th green slid just past the cup.
Warren Little
Behind him, Spaun delivered the (then) shot of the championship. At the 314-yard 17th, he striped his drive to within 13 feet of the flag. The eagle putt missed, but the birdie fell, gifting him a one-shot cushion heading to the final hole. After finding the fairway with his drive, Spaun played his approach conservatively, leaving himself well short of the pin. That's when he authored his masterpiece. Needing only a two-putt for the title, he instead rolled home that snaking 64-footer—the longest successful putt of the week by anyone in the field. For those scoring at home, it was a 40-32, the first time in over 20 years that someone won an event after an opening 40.
“I didn't look at the scoreboard,” Spaun said. “I didn't know if I had a two-shot lead. I didn't want to do anything dumb trying to protect a three-putt or something.”
So what do we make of J.J. Spaun? Perhaps you're wondering who he even is. Spaun is impossible not to champion—warm, genuinely funny, refreshingly grounded. A man who began his collegiate career as a walk-on and has been grinding ever since. Four years ago, while visiting a weathered public course in Scottsdale on assignment, this reporter discovered Spaun working on his putting stroke. While most tour professionals in this desert golf mecca retreat to exclusive country clubs, there stood Spaun—statistically among the planet's most elite golfers—practicing on what could charitably be called a goat track. His coach was based at Starfire, sure, but Spaun explained that practicing alongside weekend warriors kept his perspective firmly planted.
That perspective has been thoroughly tested, particularly when he has lost playing privileges. This year, however, something fundamental shifted. A runner-up finish in Palm Beach. A third-place tie to open the season in Hawaii. Coming within inches of toppling Rory McIlroy before falling in a playoff at the Players Championship. Entering Oakmont, he was squarely on the Ryder Cup radar. For a player of Spaun's profile, such stakes should consume every waking moment. Instead, he discovered something both profound and beautifully simple: they don't. That revelation sparked his renaissance.
Just last year, Spaun had contemplated walking away entirely. Midseason, his tour card again hanging by threads, he was emerging from a gauntlet of injuries and health struggles. This wasn't self-pity—merely the sober recognition that his best might no longer suffice. Instead, he doubled down, partially inspired by an attitude adjustment triggered by watching a romantic comedy of all things. He still believed in his destination, even if the journey was taking longer than anticipated. And if he never arrived? At least it would be one hell of a ride.
“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,” Spaun said. “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. That's kind of the mantra I've been having all year.”
He still loved the game—even when passion calcifies into profession, that flame can dim to an ember—but that love now existed within a vast universe of meaning, eclipsed by his devotion to his wife and children. It's why, despite his breakthrough at Sawgrass, he laid bare the crushing weight of absence—the guilt that haunts between ambition and family. This tension offers no salvation. While Spaun chases prize money across time zones, his wife carries the burden of solo parenthood, orchestrating their children's lives, sustained only by fleeting moments of relief. It's a sacrifice that devours him from within, a stark reminder that behind every televised swing are complex souls wrestling with the same brutal compromises that define modern life.
Which made it moving that his daughters and wife were the first to embrace him after that putt found its mark, their tearful collision on Oakmont's 18th green embodying everything he had fought for beyond the trophy itself. Spaun had begun this championship Sunday with a predawn CVS pilgrimage after one of his girls fell sick—stumbling through fluorescent-lit aisles at 3 a.m. A fitting story for this Father’s Day.
Andy Lyons
“It's just incredible. I have no words to describe the moment and them being able to see me as the winner. My daughter always asks me, every time dad goes golfing, she's like, Were you the winner today? Sometimes I'm like, Yeah, I was. She's like, Where's my surprise? So today she's like, You're the winner today. Like she got to see it. She didn't have to ask me.”
Spaun swept his daughter into his arms and carried her off the green, ascending the temporary steps to scoring while stealing one final glance at the 18th—as if to confirm that this wasn't some fevered dream conjured by exhaustion.
“Just to finish it off like that is just a dream. You watch other people do it. You see the Tiger chip, you see Nick Taylor's putt, you see crazy moments,” Spaun explained. “To have my own moment like that at this championship, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life.”
It was the putt that justifies it all. The practice sessions measured not in hours but in calluses and fatigue, the refinement of a craft that eludes mastery. The nights wrestling with doubt, questioning whether decades had been squandered chasing shadows, whether the dream was nothing more than delusion. All for the possibility that, one day, it might all make sense, that the universe would align in his favor.
On Sunday at Oakmont, with rain still glistening on the greens, J.J. Spaun seized his moment of immortality, and shared it with the souls who had made every sacrifice worthwhile.