Hard, Until It Wasn't

J.J. Spaun's remarkable U.S. Open victory at Oakmont

The 125^th U.S. Open, at Oakmont Country Club northeast of Pittsburgh, was not a championship for the faint-hearted golfer. This year’s venue, which opened in 1904, just a decade after the formation of the United States Golf Association, is symbolized by a squirrel but plays like a bear. Its claws were sharp last week.

Should greens as sloping as Oakmont’s be running faster than 14 on the Stimpmeter? Does dense rough 5¼ inches tall make sense? Those questions were in the Pennsylvania air, and they’re legitimate fodder for anyone who cares about the appropriateness of a course setup or wonders if agronomy has come so far that it’s too far.

The image of course maintenance workers laboring to mow the tall stuff growing on Oakmont’s steep bunker faces certainly makes one think that could be the case. Two weeks earlier, Erin Hills was on if not over the edge for the U.S. Women’s Open as Bob Carney observed.

Yes, the U.S. Open has always been known for being difficult. Sure, from its origin, Oakmont has been a final exam not a pop quiz, asking much of those who play it. Notwithstanding the specific parameters, golfers competing in the 10^th Open on the brawny design were attempting to come up with the same answers that those who played in the previous nine, starting in 1927, sought. “The course is better than the boys,” Walter Hagen wrote after shooting 77 in the first round of Oakmont’s maiden Open.

As ever, the rigors were many and formidable. But, as champion J.J. Spaun ultimately proved, not impossible. Spaun’s Sunday was a split-personality round for the ages, an afternoon—and early evening, thanks to a 96-minute weather delay—of disparate fates seldom seen that will be long remembered.

Oakmont founder H.C. Fownes and his son, W.C. Fownes, believed golf at their course should be a battle, and it certainly was that for Spaun and the other 155 golfers in the 125^th U.S. Open. The Fownes’s would have relished what Oakmont threw at Spaun early in fourth round, and one would hope even they would have clapped hard for Spaun’s brilliance as it ended.

W.C. Fownes liked to drop a ball at the back of the dramatically pitched second green and see if it rolled all the way off the front of the putting surface. If it did, the green was slick enough for his liking; if it didn’t, he put his crew to work to make the green faster.

After a bogey on the first hole of the final round, Spaun struck what appeared to be a wonderful approach on No. 2. But it one hopped into the flagstick in the back-left portion of the green. Spaun’s ball rolled and rolled, channeling W.C.’s measurements of a century prior, until it was well off the green and 49 yards from the cup. Bogey. Spaun then bogeyed the third, fifth and sixth holes. From one back of 54-hole leader Sam Burns through 54 holes, Spaun trailed by four strokes, and that’s where he stood when the horn blew at 4:01 p.m. For the 34-year-old Californian, it turned out to be quite a beneficial 96-minute pause. When play resumed, he parred the ninth hole to go out in five-over 40, parring the last three holes of the front to even card that ignominious figure.

Presently, Spaun was a different golfer, resembling the player who had set the pace with a bogey-free 66 in the first round. After pars at the 10^th and 1lth, Spaun sank a 40-footer for birdie at the 12^th. When Burns, in the final pairing with Adam Scott, bogeyed the 12^th, there was a five-way tie at one-over for the lead: Burns, Spaun, Scott, Carlos Ortiz and Tyrrell Hatton.

Spaun’s 22-foot birdie putt on the 14^th hole gave him the solo lead, but the advantage was short lived, because he bogeyed the 15^th. By the time Spaun reached the tee of the drivable, 314-yard, par-4 17^th hole, he was tied with Robert MacIntyre of Scotland. MacIntyre had been nine behind after three holes on Sunday, but a 68 catapulted him up the leaderboard. Just ahead of Spaun, Hatton had succumbed to a terrible downhill lie on the gnarly slope of the right greenside bunker on the gettable 17^th, making a bogey to drop to two over. He would also bogey the last.

Instead of struggling on the last two holes, Spaun excelled. His drive at No. 17, a powerfully accurate fade, scampered onto the green and just past the pin, finishing 17 feet away. A two-putt birdie put him back in front of MacIntyre. Spaun struck another accurate drive on the difficult 18^th, finding the fairway on the final hole when it was essential, just as had the previous two winners of Oakmont Opens, Angel Cabrera (2007) and Dustin Johnson (2016).

Unlike Cabrera, who approached to 20 feet, and Johnson, whose 6-iron finished within two paces of the cup, Spaun’s second shot in the gloaming left him 64 speedy feet, downhill and with a sharp left-to-right break. With MacIntyre waiting to see if he would be in a playoff Monday morning—the USGA had decided there wasn’t enough daylight to continue—Spaun hit the putt of his life.

MacIntyre applauded. The gallery roared. The U.S. Open had one of its all-time conclusions, and Spaun, who not long ago wondered if he wanted to continue trying to grind his way toward the top of the elusive pinnacle of professional golf, was a U.S. Open champion, joining Tommy Armour, Sam Parks Jr., Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Larry Nelson, Ernie Els, Cabrera and Johnson as winners at Oakmont.

Spaun is 34 years old, but he has been around the game for a long time. His mother, Dollie, played golf well into her pregnancy with J.J., prompting her friends to tell her then that the child she was about to have was destined to be a golfer. On one of the hardest courses in the world, making the difficult appear easy when it mattered most, Spaun was that and then some.