Top shots from the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont
Relive the most memorable shots from the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club, presented by Penske, where J.J Spaun secured his first major win.
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NBC Sports
2 hours ago
- NBC Sports
Everything a classic U.S. Open asks, Oakmont delivered to perfection
Rex Hoggard and Ryan Lavner join Golf Today to recap J.J. Spaun's Father's Day win at Oakmont Country Club, sharing how he reset after a long rain delay and why his finish was "arguably the best in U.S. Open history." OAKMONT, Pa. – The other three majors occupy their own lanes. The Masters is built on pageantry and drama. The PGA is renowned for its deep field and no-frills setup. The Open is unique in its variability and shot-making. But the U.S. Open, in its best and purest form, has always been about savagery. A steady diet of fairways and greens and must-make 6-footers. A test of patience and grit and poise. Setup and conditions designed to push players to the brink. J.J. Spaun's 64-footer on the 72nd hole Sunday will be looped on highlight reels for ages, but his was the rare flourish on a day that devolved into a war of attrition – like any classic U.S. Open. It was beautifully chaotic, challenging, maddening. It was U.S. Open perfection. 'It's one of the hardest courses in the world, and you're going to face adversity, you're going to get bad breaks, you're going to get screwed, you're going to have some things go wrong,' said Spaun's performance coach, Josh Gregory. 'So are you going to react, or are you going to respond? Let's go forward and find out.' Along the way, a few of the dozen Open contenders irrevocably lost because of the conditions. Sunday at Oakmont featured the strongest winds of the week, 'only' 15 mph, that turned an already ferocious test into an exacting examination of precision and pace. Then came the late-afternoon downpours, sudden and strong, that created indecision with the strike in the saturated fairways and guesswork through the rapidly forming puddles on the greens. Some griped at that added variable. Cameron Young's even-par 70 was the second-best score among the last 17 pairings – and yet he was understandably grumpy afterward, pointing to his three bogeys in a four-hole span on the front nine during the worst of the weather. 'It's not fun waiting for squeegeeing,' Young said, 'and there's really not much rhythm to be had out there.' Two shots behind at the time, Adam Scott figured he was in a rare position to attack, just 130 yards away in the 11th fairway. But too much water between the ball and clubface created a flyer effect and caused the shot to sail the green by a whopping 24 yards. From deep fescue behind the green, he did well just to escape with bogey. It was the most head-scratching moment during his back-nine 41. 'It was borderline unplayable,' Scott said after his Sunday 79. 'The water was so close to the surface.' But soldier on they did, much to the dismay of 54-hole leader Sam Burns, who, when he didn't miss fairways, received cruel breaks by twice rolling into a divot in the fairway and twice being denied relief for casual water. His major bid was officially doomed once he was told by two officials to play on from the waterlogged right edge of the 15th fairway. After disagreeing with their interpretation of the rule – and suggesting that it likely needed to be amended in the future – he splashed a double-crossed iron left of the green, taking a few angry swipes at the turf as he trudged through the puddles toward the green. Afterward, Burns didn't make excuses for his final-round 78. 'The conditions were extremely difficult,' he said, 'and I clearly didn't have my best stuff today.' Others were undone by the course itself. Oakmont is often too much to handle on a benign day, during member play, and the USGA only ratcheted up the difficulty for the game's best players by growing the rough to a uniform five inches in length. Because of the unique thatch of Kentucky bluegrass mixed with ryegrass, even the strongest players with the steepest angles of descent couldn't routinely advance their shots onto the green, often opting for the 60-degree wedge, a pitch-out and a longer third shot. That severe punishment was a stark departure from most weeks on Tour, when distance is rewarded while accuracy is often disregarded. There's a reason why golf's governing bodies are set to roll back the ball for the professionals in 2028, with an increased focus on driver heads next; off-center hits aren't properly punished and some of the game's inherent skill has been reduced. But this Open's binary outcome off the tee – hit the fairway, or miss and hack out – was a throwback to a bygone era and enough to vex even the game's best driver. For the week, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler hit just 52% of the fairways – well down from his season average of 63% – and lost strokes off the tee for the first time in four months. And yet, because of all the carnage unfolding around him, Scheffler still had a chance to post the clubhouse lead when he stepped onto the 18th tee – all he had to do was find the fairway. With his tournament hanging in the balance, the Tour's driving leader fanned his shot into the right rough and found, what he said later, was his gnarliest lie of the week. The hero shot from 211 yards out wasn't even an option; he angled himself 45 degrees away from the flag and slashed it 60 yards across the width of the fairway. 'That's why you hit the ball in the fairway, so you don't have to deal with that stuff,' Scheffler said. 'Typically, I'm good at it. This week I wasn't as good as normal, and I paid the price for it.' Added Ryan Fox, whose best score of the week (69) came on a day when he found four more fairways: 'You feel under pressure on the tee the whole time, because if you don't drive it on the fairway, you're dead, basically.' Tyrrell Hatton found that out the hard way. Chasing Bob MacIntyre's 1-over 281 total, the fiery Englishman was stalking a final birdie on the 17th that would have put him in prime position. When he pushed his tee shot slightly on the drivable par 4, Hatton assumed his ball had settled in an ideal position, at the bottom of the deep greenside bunker (nicknamed 'Big Mouth'), leaving him a straightforward sand shot for an up-and-down birdie. Imagine his surprise, then, to see his ball not in the sand but rather in the thick rough on a severe downslope leading into the bunker. With no way to put enough height and spin on his pitch shot, he flubbed it into the steep bank in front of him, stubbed it again on the other side, and walked off with a momentum-killing bogey. Afterward, Hatton wanted to pin the mistake on lousy luck: 'I feel I've missed it in the right spot and got punished, which, ultimately, I don't think ends up being fair.' But what he had said just seconds before was more accurate: 'I've hit a decent – well, obviously not a decent tee shot, or that would have been on the green.' Indeed. The first of two full shots that won Spaun this U.S. Open wasn't 'decent'. It was, in a word, perfect: His drive on 17 – 309 yards in length, 104 feet high through a steady rain, and with 16 yards of left-to-right slide – landed in the narrow throat to the green and ran 15 feet past the cup to set up a stress-free birdie, a stunning strike from a player who, hours earlier, had appeared to squander his opportunity – again. A 34-year-old everyman, Spaun had never finished inside the top 20 in a major and was on the verge of losing his card altogether last summer. And at the time, he was OK with it. He had played eight years on Tour, banked $12 million, made plenty of lifelong friends. It was time for the next chapter, with a young, growing family he hadn't much seen while he toiled on the road. For years he'd been playing tentatively, afraid of the big moment, scarred from previous experiences when he'd had a chance to win and failed, spectacularly. Figuring his playing days were numbered, he vowed to change his attitude for the final few weeks. 'If this is how I go out,' he said, 'then I might as well go down swinging.' Spaun rallied to save his card last summer and now is playing the best golf of his life. He didn't back down during close calls earlier this year in Hawaii and Palm Beach. And he didn't quake under the final-round pressure at The Players either, nor in the head-to-head playoff with Rory McIlroy; he went right at the flag on the island 17th, undone by an unexpected gust of wind. Now, all of those prior experiences seemed to fortify him heading into golf's toughest test. 'He just believes now that he's one of the best players,' said his caddie, Mark Carens. Spaun appeared intent to show it at Oakmont, where in the opening round he carded just the second bogey-free score in the past two U.S. Opens there. He hung around amid changing conditions the next two days, relying on sublime scrambling and lights-out putting after recently linking up with Gregory, a short-game and performance coach. (The U.S. Open was their first full week working together; Gregory asked Spaun with a laugh on Friday: 'So, how do you like to warm up?') Because of the Open's unique demands, Spaun realized he needed some outside help. Gregory gave Spaun tips how to read the lies in the rough and then the proper technique to save himself when he was out of position. 'He's not afraid to have the best year of his career and to reach out and say, 'I want to be elite, and I need some help,'' Gregory said. 'He said, 'I want the ball; I just need the tools.' That shows the kind of person he is. He didn't want to settle for just being great.' But in the penultimate group on Sunday, Spaun's chances appeared to be dwindling. He chopped his way up the opening hole and made bogey. He dropped shots on four of the next five holes, too, with bad breaks (caroms off the flagstick and rake) and poor club selection, his win probability plunging to just 1%, according to Data Golf. When the horn sounded to suspend play, Spaun was seething – and also grateful. Granted an opportunity to decompress and start anew, he headed to the clubhouse, where he swapped out his solid navy polo in favor of a patterned one, and regrouped with his team. 'He was pissed off – and he should have been,' Gregory said. 'And that's a great thing, because anger can lead to motivation. He was like, 'This is bulls---, I can go win this thing, and I just need one thing to go my way.'' That happened on the 12th hole, when Spaun's second shot in the heavy rain dove into the native area down the right side. Except, for once, he was relieved to see it somewhat sitting up in the hay, allowing him to put a wedge on the back of the ball and trundle it onto the green, 40 feet away. He canned that putt for an unlikely birdie – and then he was off, hardly missing a shot down the stretch and saving his best stuff for the final 30 minutes of the longest day of his life. The tee shot on 17 set up the go-ahead birdie, and all that was left was to pass the U.S. Open's final test: No. 18 ... 509 yards ... bunkers and rough left ... hack-out rough right ... and a hard-sloping, sopping-wet fairway ... And Spaun hit a 308-yard seed that split the fairway. He scooped up his tee before his ball had even begun its descent. 'It's just do-or-die, right?' Carens said. 'You've got to sack up and hit the shot. And he did.' And it was the perfect encapsulation of a championship that, after a few wayward years, finally returned to its roots. Challenging conditions that emphasized the importance of clean, crisp, center-face contact. A setup so demanding that it prompted a former champion to trash his locker. And a steely competitor, coming into his own after years of perseverance, who met the challenge with perhaps the most clutch final two holes in the tournament's 125-year history. Six macho shots, for glory. 'It's the hardest course I've ever seen, the ultimate test,' Gregory said, 'and J.J. wasn't afraid.' The quintessential U.S. Open venue – and an archetypal champ. Watch the 71st hole which flipped the U.S. Open on its head for eventual winner J.J. Spaun, starting with the drive of a lifetime that set up a two-putt birdie to take the outright lead at Oakmont Country Club.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
U.S. Open 2025: 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. "Just to finish it off like that is just a dream," Spaun said after. "You watch other people do it. You see the Tiger chip, you see Nick Taylor's putt, you see crazy moments. To have my own moment like that at this championship, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life." Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.' Advertisement (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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Paige Spiranac defends Rory McIlroy after rocky US Open
Paige Spiranac is coming to Rory McIlroy's defense following a choppy U.S. Open showing over the weekend. In a message shared Sunday on X, the longtime golf influencer, 32, offered her take on the reigning Masters champion bypassing the media recently. 'Might be an unpopular opinion here but he doesn't have to talk to the media if he doesn't want to. It's not required. And why would he when everyone is always analyzing and criticizing his every move,' Spiranac wrote after McIlroy met with the media at Oakmont, where he finished tied for 19th at 7-over par. 'There is clearly something more going on none of us are privy to so maybe let's not all pile on.' 6 Paige Spiranac defended Rory McIlroy following his rocky U.S. Open appearance in June 2025. Instagram 6 Rory McIlroy finished tied for 19th at the U.S. Open. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect McIlroy, just two months removed from completing golf's Grand Slam with his Masters triumph in April, ducked the media after shooting a 4-over 74 in the first round at the Pittsburgh-area course on Thursday. Two days later, the five-time major champion finally spoke with reporters, where he not only expressed he's 'felt a little flat' since reaching the sport's mountaintop, but vented his frustration with the media. 'I have been totally available for the last few years, and I'm not saying … maybe not you guys, but maybe more just the whole thing,' McIlroy said. 6 Rory McIlroy, seen here during the third round of the U.S. Open, ducked the media after the first round. Getty Images 6 Paige Spiranac wrote on X of McIlroy, 'There is clearly something more going on none of us are privy to so maybe let's not all pile on.' Instagram/ Paige Spiranac 6 Rory McIlroy is two months removed from his 2025 Masters triumph. Getty Images The Northern Irishman, 36, made headlines before last month's PGA Championship when his driver was deemed non-conforming and he did not meet with the press at all during that major at Quail Hollow. He did not address the driver drama with the press. 'I feel like I've earned the right to do whatever I want to do,' McIlroy said Saturday. Despite the lackluster weekend at Oakmont, which saw J.J. Spaun capture his first career major win, McIlroy is motivated to close out the final major of the season on a high note in his home country. 6 Rory McIlroy during the fourth round of the U.S. Open on July 15, 2025. AP The 2025 Open Championship begins at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland on July 17. 'I climbed my Everest in April, and I think, after you do something like that, you've got to make your way back down, and you've got to look for another mountain to climb,' McIlroy said. 'An Open at Portrush is certainly one of those.' McIlroy last won The Open in 2014 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in the U.K.
