Celebrate J.J. Spaun's victory in the U.S. Open with our commemorative page print
Celebrate J.J. Spaun's victory in the U.S. Open with our commemorative page print
A 34-year-old journeyman who contemplated retirement a year ago wins the U.S. Open? Sounds more like the movie 'Tin Cup' than what transpired at storied Oakmont Country Club on Father's Day.
But J.J. Spaun, who was born in Los Angeles and played at San Diego State, won the tournament in dramatic fashion on a roller coaster of a Sunday. He bogeyed five of the first six holes but rallied with a 3-under 32 on the back nine, which included birdies of 40 feet, 22 feet and an incredible 64 feet.
Celebrate Spaun's underdog victory with a beautifully designed commemorative page print from USA TODAY. Featuring a bold headline and a striking image of Spaun celebrating at Oakmont, this keepsake captures the moment perfectly.
Buy our U.S. Open page print
Printed on premium, acid-free art paper, this collectible starts at $35 (plus shipping). Elegant upgrade options include framed editions and backgrounds in canvas, acrylic, metal or wood through the USA TODAY Store.
Late on the back nine, Spaun was one of five players tied for the lead on a course that crowned such champions as Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Johnny Miller and Ernie Els. Spaun finished at 1-under 279, the only golfer in red numbers, two strokes ahead of Scotland's Robert MacIntyre.
He made the 64-foot putt for birdie on the 72nd hole when he only needed a two-putt par for victory.
Own a piece of golf history today! J.J. Spaun's story will long be remembered by golf fans the world over.
Buy our U.S. Open page print
Contact Gene Myers at gmyers@gannett.com. Follow him on X @GeneMyers. After nearly a quarter-century as sports editor at the Detroit Free Press, Myers unretired to coordinate book and poster projects across the USA TODAY Network. Explore more books and page prints from the USA TODAY Network, including titles on the Florida Gators' NCAA basketball championship and the Philadelphia Eagles' victory in Super Bowl 59.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC Sports
an hour 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.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code SBWIREDYW: Score 10 Profit Boosts for Game 5 of NBA Finals
Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code SBWIREDYW: Score 10 Profit Boosts for Game 5 of NBA Finals Of the first four games of the NBA Finals, three have delivered classic and frantic finishes. What's going to happen in tonight's Game 5 when the Oklahoma City Thunder host the Indiana Pacers? If you think you know which team will take the 3-2 lead, but then you should capitalize on the Caesars Sportsbook promo code SBWIREDYW that gives you 10 100% profit-boost tokens just for playing a first bet for as little as $1. Here how this welcome offer works for new bettors: After you sign up for an account, play a $1 first bet on the NBA or any other sport you find on the Caesars Sportsbook app — one of the nation's best sports betting apps. As soon as your first bet settles — win or lose — Caesars Sportsbook whisks you 10 100% profit-boost tokens and 14 days to play them. Simply attach a token to a bet and you'll double your profit when that bet wins. Just remember tokens can only be used on max bets of $25 and on odds of -10000 or better. For the fifth consecutive NBA Finals game, Oklahoma City is a significant favorite to win. But Caesars Sportsbook allows you to bet on a whole lot more than simply who'll win Game 5. Do you enjoy player props? You can get the Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton, for example, at +135 to score at least 20 points or +160 to hand out at least 10 assists. Looking for a bigger score? You can create your own parlay or go with one of the parlays proposed by Caesars Sportsbook. There's one called '3 Party' that gives you +5300 odds if Haliburton, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Aaron Nesmith, Jalen Williams, Myles Turner, Obi Toppin and Alex Caruso each hit at least two 3-pointers. No matter which NBA bets intrigue you the most, Caesars Sportsbook delivers one of the market's most impressive sportsbook promos. Tap the nearest BET NOW button and type in the Caesars Sportsbook promo code SBWIREDYW to put in the bare minimum of capital (the $1 first bet) in exchange for the 10 100% profit-boost tokens that could pay off big. Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code SBWIREDYW: 10 100% Profit Boosts Guaranteed for MLB, Soccer & More 📱 Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code SBWIREDYW 🤑 Caesars Sportsbook Promo Bet $1, Get 10 100% Profit Boosts ✅ Terms & Conditions New customers 21 and over in AZ, CO, IL, IA, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, OH, NC, NJ, NY, PA, TN, VA, WV. 18 and over in WY & DC; first bet must be at least $1; profit boosts expire after 14 days. ✔️ Last Verified June 16, 2025 Did you see that huge MLB trade on Father's Day? The Boston Red Sox swapped top hitter Rafael Devers and his huge contract to the San Francisco Giants for two pitchers and two prospects. At least for now, the Red Sox wind up on the short end — and the new-look Red Sox take the field tonight in Seattle as a hefty underdog as the Mariners go with Logan Gilbert vs. Lucas Giolito. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani pitches for the first time in nearly two years when the Los Angeles Dodgers host the San Diego Padres. Check the latest MLB odds to see what Caesars Sportsbook has in store for Shohei's return to the mound. Best Bets with Caesars Promo Code SBWIREDYW: Monday, June 16 Soccer: Club World Cup, Boca Juniors vs. Benfica, 6 p.m. ET Club World Cup, Boca Juniors vs. Benfica, 6 p.m. ET MLB: Phillies at Marlins, 6:40 p.m. Phillies at Marlins, 6:40 p.m. NBA: Pacers at Thunder, 8:30 p.m. Pacers at Thunder, 8:30 p.m. GOLD CUP: Jamaica vs. Guatemala, 10 p.m. Jamaica vs. Guatemala, 10 p.m. MLB: Padres at Dodgers, 10:10 p.m. There are two huge soccer tournaments that just got underway. FIFA's inaugural Club World Cup features several of the world's best clubs battling all over the United States. Tonight's matches are happening in Miami (Boca Juniors vs. Benfica) and Philadelphia (Flamengo vs. ES Tunis). CONCACAF's Gold Cup, meanwhile, is starting its group stage play as well. The United States squad opened Sunday with a 5-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago. Tonight, there's a Group C doubleheader in Carson, Calif., with Panama facing Guadaloupe and Jamaica taking on Guatemala. You'll find updated odds on Caesars Sportsbook's soccer tab. Ready to get started? When you're creating your account, don't forget to type in the Caesars Sportsbook promo code SBWIREDYW. That ensures you'll secure 10 100% profit-boost tokens just for playing a first bet for as little as $1. How to Claim The Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code Bonus Offer It takes just a few moments to secure your Caesars Sportsbook promo code offer: Click any BET NOW link on this page to open the Caesars Sportsbook offer page. Your Caesars Sportsbook promo code should appear on the landing page; if not, when prompted for a promo code during sign up either type or paste it in. Select your state and click 'Join Now.' Enter a current email address, set up a secure password and provide your cell phone number. Answer some basic personal questions to verify age, identification and location. Select a banking option to place at least a $10 initial deposit. Caesars Sportsbook Promo Code Terms & Conditions The Caesars Sportsbook promo code SBWIREDYW code entitles you to 10 100% profit-boost tokens just for placing that $1 first bet. You'll have 14 days to use your tokens. Attach a token to any bet that you'd like to double your profit on. Just keep in mind you can't use a token on a bet bigger than $25 or odds more conservative than -10000. The maximum added profit per boost is $2,500. Bonus bets are non-withdrawable. But the Caesars Sportsbook promo code features a 1X playthrough policy, so any bonus bet needs to win just once for you to collect the profit in cash.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Miles the father: Take a look at Broncos mascot history
Miles the father: Take a look at Broncos mascot history The Denver Broncos celebrated Father's Day with an X post celebrating some of the superstar fathers and sons on the team. Denver posted several father-son duos, including Pat Surtain Sr, and Pat Surtain II. However, the Broncos forgot to add one important father-son duo. The Broncos forgot to add the longest-standing father-son relationship for their post: Denver mascot Miles and his foal, Miles Jr. Uni Watch's Kary Klismet dove into the history of two Denver father-son mascots, Rocky (Denver Nuggets) and Miles in a Father's Day post. "Welcome back, fellow Uni Watchers, to what I can now happily say is an annual tradition of examining one of the most underrated observances on the uni-versal calendar: the convergence of Father's Day (celebrated this year on Sunday, June 15th) and National Mascot Day (celebrated every year on June 17th)," said Klismet. "What better way to recognize these two important holidays than with a story that bridges the gap between the (paternal) masculine and mascot." Klismet talked about the Broncos' unique mascot history before talking about the father-foal relationship of Miles and Mini Miles. "Mini Miles has been galloping alongside his father at games since as early as 2008," said Klismet. "Remarkably, Mini Miles doesn't seem to have grown much in those seventeen years. Maybe his coltish exuberance keeps him looking youthful. Regardless, there's no denying the tight familial bond between these mischievous mustangs by observing their on-field antics." Miles and Mini Miles recently helped the Broncos unveil their 2025 NFL schedule in May, with Mini Miles riding a sheep in a Colorado tradition called "Mutton Bustin'." What other "father-son" mascot duos can you think of?
