U.S. Open: J.J. Spaun hits the shots of his life to win his first major

OAKMONT, Pa. — Some major championships are exquisite exhibitions of athletic grace and mental tenacity, symphonies conducted on fairways. You watch them, and you feel thrilled, energized, even inspired by the generational talent on display.

The 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont was none of that. J.J. Spaun won the tournament with a score of -1, but the better way to put it might be he survived the tournament. This was a down-in-the-mud fistfight, a battle against the elements, the course, the field and the self.

With six holes remaining and rain falling, five players were tied for the lead: Sam Burns, Adam Scott, Tyrrell Hatton, Carlos Ortiz and J.J. Spaun. One stroke behind them: Viktor Hovland and Robert MacIntyre.

MacIntyre, with a birdies at 14 and 17, got himself to 1-under. Playing ahead of the pack, MacIntyre stood over a par putt at 18 to set the mark, and he drained it. He was in the clubhouse at +1. Would it hold?

Ortiz bowed out with a double bogey at 15, Hovland with a bogey there, and Hatton with bogeys at 17 and 18.

Burns ejected with a brutal break at 15 when he wasn’t granted relief from what he believed was standing water. Forced to hit it where it sat, he hooked it into the rough, leading to a double bogey.

Scott, trying to win his first major since 2013, found the rough on just about every hole coming home, and he was done.

And then J.J. Spaun hit the shot of his life. Or maybe, the second greatest:

That led to a birdie, a one-stroke lead and one par on 18 for the U.S. Open championship.

He didn’t get par. He drained the putt for birdie … from 64 feet.

This was a vintage U.S. Open, brutal and uncompromising and requiring everything the leaders had to give. Those who couldn’t bring it home will remember this one for a long, long time, and Spaun will remember it forever.

Oakmont plays the starring role

At most majors, the course is a supporting character, taking a couple key lines here and there but deferring to the stars. Oakmont thundered onto the national stage, its history of hurling around the game’s best like dirty laundry making for a sinister overture heading into the tournament.

Oakmont’s quirks — greased-mercury greens, abandon-all-hope rough, the Church Pew bunkers, the highway that cuts through the heart of the course — all combined to make the course itself the star of the show. No course has hosted more U.S. Opens than Oakmont, and virtually every one of the nine prior to this year featured drama, controversy and gritty, muddy scrambles for the trophy.

So in retrospect, the entire golf world was pretty naive in thinking that Scottie Scheffler would come in here and ransack the joint, that Bryson DeChambeau would overpower the old warhorse, that Xander Schauffele or Collin Morikawa or Rory McIlroy would use some of their modern wizardry to take down a course that’s been humbling champions longer than their grandfathers have been alive.

“When you’re in the fairway, there’s opportunity,” Scheffler said on Tuesday, “but what’s so special about this place is pretty much every time you’re off the fairway it’s going to be very difficult for you to get the ball to the green.”

(This is what is known as foreshadowing.)

J.J. Spaun, best known prior to this week as McIlroy’s playoff victim in this year’s Players Championship, leaped out to the Thursday lead with a bogey-free 66.

“I kind of came out here with no prior history at Oakmont, not really knowing what to expect even U.S. Open-wise. This is only my second one. I don’t know if that freed me up in any aspect,” he said. “I’m just overly pleased with how I started the tournament.”

Others, not so much. McIlroy struggled to a +4 first round and left without speaking to the media. DeChambeau, completely twisted up by the greens, made a mental mistake in dropping his ball on the 12th, but was saved from a penalty by a friendly official.

“This golf course can come up and get you pretty quick and you’ve just got to be on your game, and it got me, and I wasn’t fully on my game,” DeChambeau said after his Thursday round. “Pretty disappointed with how I played.”

Si Woo Kim offered up the most direct perspective: “Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing on the course,” he said. “Kind of hitting good, but feel like this course is too hard for me.”

As tough as Thursday was, Friday proved even more difficult. Spaun surrendered two strokes off his total and gave up the lead to Burns, who finished the day at -3. DeChambeau imploded, missing the cut by three strokes. Phil Mickelson, so often frustrated by the U.S. Open, suffered one last indignity when he melted down on his final three holes and missed a chance to play the weekend by mere inches.

Shortly after a disappointed Mickelson left the course, the skies opened up, dousing the few players left on the course and halting the second round early. That led directly to one of the few feelgood stories of this brutal weekend: qualifier Philip Barbaree, with his wife Chloe caddying for him, came back on Saturday morning needing a par on the tough ninth to make the cut. He pulled it off and celebrated; who cares if he finished the tournament at +24? He had a once-in-a-lifetime moment on one of the toughest courses on the planet.

“Knowing that I pretty much had to come out and make par on one of the hardest holes on the course, and then to actually do it, that’s what you practice for, that’s what you care about,” Barbaree said. “To be able to pull off a shot like that when it matters, and then with her on the bag, it’s special.”

Stars exit stage right and left and into the fescue

Burns reached -4 on Saturday but couldn’t extend his lead; Spaun stuck right with him to finish at -3. Also at -3, and checking in from 2013: Scott, competing in his 97th major. The overnight rains softened the course up; the field averaged two strokes better on Saturday than on the two days prior.

Meanwhile, stars flickered and fizzled. Scheffler, McIlroy, Rahm, Schauffele … none of the game’s best could keep up with the pace set by Burns, Spaun and Scott. (Yes, that is a real sentence.) McIlroy, in particular, remained frustrated at his inability to capitalize on his epic Masters win, and unloaded his frustrations on the media by speaking for the first time after a major round since Augusta.

“I feel like I’ve earned the right to do whatever I want to do,” McIlroy said, when pressed about his decision not to speak after his rounds. He later declared that all he wanted out of Sunday was “hopefully a round in under four-and-a-half hours and get out of here.”

McIlroy’s frustrations continued on Sunday, though on the positive side he pulled off one of the most impressive club tosses you’ll ever see:

But McIlroy, like most of the other superstars, was irrelevant to the tournament’s final outcome. Burns (-4) and Scott (-3) made up the final pairing, with Spaun (-3) and Viktor Hovland (-1) just ahead of them, and Carlos Ortiz (E) and Tyrrell Hatton (+1) in the third-to-last group.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, but this golf course is difficult,” Burns said Saturday evening. “It takes a lot of patience.”

He had no idea how right he would be.

Survival Sunday

The carnage began early for the leaders. Scott bogeyed the first and third holes, while Burns bogeyed the second and fifth. Ahead of them, Ortiz, Hatton and Hovland all struggled. Spaun, in particular, surrendered five strokes in his first six holes … which, under normal conditions, would have ejected him from the tournament. But these were not normal conditions.

Not all of it was his fault.

He would later have a ball hit a rake, another spin off the green, and when he made the turn, he had five bogeys on his card and had dropped from the top of the leaderboard.

Soon thereafter, the weather arrived.

At 4:01 p.m., with Burns and Scott standing on the tee at the 8th, the soaking rains returned, washing out the entire field for a full 96 minutes.

The course flooded, requiring a squeegee-wielding maintenance crew to attempt to get Oakmont playable once again.

Play resumed at 5:40, and almost immediately Burns and Scott both got into trouble off the tee at the par-3 8th, the longest par-3 in U.S. Open history, Burns off the edge of the green and Scott into the rough. Burns was able to get up and down for his par, but Scott dropped a shot to fall back to even. Ahead of them, Hatton and Hovland both fell to +2.

More critically, Burns surrendered a stroke at the 9th when his tee shot found some of the longest hay on the property on the left side of the hole. Scott’s tee shot ended up on a cart path along the right side of the hole, but he was able to convert his birdie.

Burns thus turned at -1, Scott at even par, and Ortiz, Hatton, Spaun and Hovland all at +2. And right about then, the rains started up again. This time around, though, there was no thunder, meaning the players were getting doused but continued to play.

On the first hole of the inward nine, Burns extended his lead with a birdie to get back to -2. Ahead of him, Ortiz was able to chop his way back into the hunt with a birdie on 11 that dropped him to +1.

The tournament turned at No. 15 for both Burns and Scott. Burns, standing in a puddle, asked for relief. He wasn’t given it, then hooked his shot over the green, leading to a double bogey.

From there, everyone but Spaun and MacIntyre fell off.

Playing ahead of Spaun, all MacIntyre could do was wait in the clubhouse, where he watched Spaun produce the two most magical shots of his life.

Earlier this year, Spaun lost The Players Championship to Rory McIlroy in a playoff. It was a crushing defeat for a player who had one PGA Tour victory on his resume. Three months later, he’s a major champion.

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