Resilient J.J. Spaun Wins Wild 2025 U.S. Open

On a rainy, sopping-wet U.S. Open Sunday in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, J.J. Spaun emerged from the mud victorious, earning his first major championship win.

Playing in the penultimate group, Spaun entered the final round at 3 under, one behind 54-hole leader Sam Burns. He bogeyed five of his first six holes, a stretch that included clanking one off the flagstick and back down the front of the second green, an unfortunate and costly break.

Minutes after Spaun’s group walked off the eighth green, tournament officials halted play as storms descended upon Oakmont Country Club. Following a 97-minute delay, Spaun came back out and went to work, making four birdies against one bogey while the rest of the field collapsed around him.

Standing on the 17th tee at 1 over, Spaun was tied with clubhouse leader Robert MacIntyre. With the tournament on the line, Spaun striped his tee shot 309 yards on a perfect line over the left-hand bunkers to 18 feet, setting up a stress-free birdie to take a one-shot lead to the brutish 18th hole. After a mediocre iron shot into the 18th green amidst intensifying rainfall, Spaun stood over a 64-foot putt needing two putts to become a U.S. Open champion. And buried the first one.

Given the lousy start to his round, it would have been easy for Spaun to unravel like many of his competitors. Instead, he just kept plodding through the mud, unfazed by his poor play and misfortune leading into the weather delay. “I really showed myself a lot today on that back nine,” Spaun noted in his post-round press conference.

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Currently in his ninth year on the PGA Tour, the 34-year-old is an excellent testament to the power of persistence, steadily improving over the course of a decade to prepare himself for the biggest moment of his career. He’s never been one of the hottest prospects in golf, a point he referenced in his presser: “I wasn't really groomed to be a professional golfer. I didn't get put through academies. I didn't play the AJGA. I played local stuff…I just kept going, one foot in front of the other.” Now, he’s ascended into another echelon, joining golf’s esteemed list of major championship winners.

Sunday’s performance softens the blow of Spaun’s playoff loss to Rory McIlroy at the Players Championship back in March. So will a plane ticket to Long Island in September. With the win, Spaun moves into third in Team USA’s Ryder Cup standings, nearly guaranteeing his spot at Bethpage. If today’s performance is any indication, he’ll be a tough guy to beat in his Ryder Cup debut.

Oakmont Finishes Under Par

‍In other odds and ends, the 2025 U.S. Open winner finished under par, settling one of the most debated questions in golf entering this year’s championship. Sorry, Oakmont membership: your golf course just isn’t hard enough, I fear. It’s a cool, historic golf course. Hard, though? I’m afraid not. The 5.5-inch rough that deskilled around-the-green play, turned bunkers into safe havens, and apparently injured multiple wrists simply wasn’t enough to protect par.  

I only kid. In all seriousness and on a related note, I take no issue with how the USGA set up the golf course this week. That’s how you must set up Oakmont to achieve the goals the USGA wanted to achieve this week, primarily a restoration of the meaning of par. Could the rough have been maintained at a shorter length to allow more creativity on approach shots and from around the greens? Sure. That decision would’ve also allowed golfers to get away with being less accurate off the tee, though.

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It is utterly foolish that the modern game is in a place where you need 5.5-inch rough, greens that stimp in the 15s, and effective playing corridors that are narrower than the dimensions of modern shot patterns to produce a winning score near par. More simply put, we’re playing golf courses out of scale and at speeds and rough lengths pushing past the line of reasonability. However, since we are in that place with the modern game, setup becomes an impossible exercise in balancing priorities and weighing tradeoffs.

The solution, of course, is the sensible one. Dialing back equipment to restore the value of finding the center of the club face and recalibrating the scale of the game to the golf courses we play. With responsible regulation, we’d be able to cut the rough without sacrificing the meaning of a par, reduce the role of luck in the tournament, and generate a more natural, skillful version of the sport. At the same time, you might risk running afoul of TaylorMade, who produces surveys indicating that fans love birdies. Or Acushnet, who ran a commercial all weekend showing the evolution of the golf ball or, as it’s known in some circles, increased athleticism over time.

Oakmont is a wonderful, historic golf course, worthy of hosting many more championships. Hopefully the next time we see it, Oakmont will play at a more appropriate scale that properly showcases the brilliance of both the best golfers in the world and the golf course.

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.