What Comes Next After Winning A U.S. Open Championship?

Even J.J. Spaun did not know what was going to happen next after he won the 125th U.S. Open Championship at the Oakmont Country Club last Sunday. 

 "I got whisked off the green and then back onto the green probably around 8:45 p.m. and then did the whole formalities of the ceremony, signing a bunch of memorabilia, obviously getting the trophy, seeing it get engraved," Spaun said Wednesday in his first interview with the media since leaving Oakmont.  The USGA did a great job of kind of giving us our own little room to kind of hang out and chill all night till whenever we wanted to leave.  We didn't leave until about 1:00 a.m., we didn't leave Oakmont until 1:00 a.m. back down to Pittsburgh where I was staying.

 "Then it was a quick three hours of sleep.  I got back at 1:30, and I just kind of sat in bed, trying to maybe go through my phone.  Took a quick shower, started going through my phone to respond to some people and just tried to see what was going on to help me like soak it in and realize that it actually happened because it's just been such a blur since then.

 "Then we were off to New York City.  Had a nice dinner with my family on Monday night.  We went to do all the media 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning.  Didn't finish -- it was literally nonstop.  Didn't finish until 3:30, 4:00, hopped in a car, got driven up here.  That was about 3 1/2 hours. 

 "Didn't walk through the front door of the hotel until 8:00 p.m."

 "Finally got some good sleep, though.  I slept about eight hours, which was nice.  The last two nights, I got the same amount as I did last night combined."

J.J. Spaun's Major Championship Record

 Question: "Over the last day or so, who are some of the coolest people who have reached out to you to congratulate you?"

 "I heard from George Lopez, comedian and actor from Los Angeles; Mookie Betts, who was actually my Pro-Am partner at Pebble Beach; Scott Van Pelt; a lot of people," Spaun said. "I'm still like halfway through my messages. Curtis Strange, Hale Irwin, just some great champions that have been there and know what it's like, people that I have never even talked to, but it was great."

 Question: "Have you had any opportunity so far with your team, your family, to sort of just sit down for a second and try to plan out what could be the next couple weeks, or is it at this point still day by day trying to ride this thing?"

 "It's been day by day," Spaun said. "I still haven't really been able to enjoy it and not have any responsibilities.  

 "It would be nice to just sit on my couch at home and have the trophy sitting right next to me and watch some SportsCenter or something, but that's kind of how I like to enjoy things, just kind of vegging out, especially after long weeks on the road and big tournaments.

 "We're getting closer to what I have in plan for the next few weeks, but just so far taking it day by day."

 Question: "What do you think will be the biggest challenge for you, certainly through the rest of the season, in terms of compartmentalizing what you need to do to be successful, to play good golf through the rest of the year, and also at the same time, again, appreciating that win?

 "I definitely need to keep the hunger there," said Spaun. "I think I will have the hunger just because I want to continue to prove myself, but not prove myself to anybody other than myself, I feel like, and that's kind of been my biggest barrier throughout my entire career is just trying not to be so hard on myself and not ruining any sort of confidence that I've built from all these experiences on my journey as a golfer.

 "As long as I keep that up, I think I'll continue to play well, and obviously winning the U.S. Open is going to be a huge boost to that sort of inner ego, I guess you could say, to keep that self-belief alive and burning."

 "Yeah, I need to enjoy this, like Keegan (Bradley) told me that yesterday.  He said, you need to enjoy this.  Do your best to just enjoy it.  It's easy to kind of let it out the window and get right into the next week and forget about it for a while, but just do your best to enjoy it. 

 "I'm planning to enjoy it next week, that's for sure, at least for next week.

 Question: "As you look back on the last year and a half or so from where you are now, that point you've told the story where you nearly stepped away, now obviously a

 U.S. Open champ, what's your big takeaway from that rise, and what do you hope people take away who learn that story?

 "I would say pretty cliche, but to never give up," Spaun said. "I think the biggest thing is you can always - there's two ways you can kind of take away when your back's up against the wall.  You can kind of succumb to it and just say, okay, this is my way out, or I'm going to fight back. 

 "I've been kind of through these situations in my life before, and I've always kind of fought back and come out the other side instead of kind of succumbing to it and letting it get to me and ending any sort of dream I had, whether it was like the diabetes or going through a bad slump in golf.

 "I think that's kind of the mindset, and I think it just shifted my perspective, where if my fate is to be on this tour, if my fate is to be a U.S. Open champion, it will happen, and all I can do is just try my best and give myself the best opportunity to play my best.  I think taking a lot of pressure off yourself is the biggest way to do that.

 Question: "You're the first PGA TOUR Americas alum to win a major.  Then 2021 you went back to the Korn Ferry Tour finals and finished second in Boise to keep your card.  I was wondering if you could kind of contextualize the importance of those pathways in your development to get to this point, and specifically how big that week in Boise was to finish second when you're on the verge of losing your card?"

 "Like I was saying earlier, I've kind of been put in situations where it's not looking good, but I've always fought through those ruts and was able to come out on top," Spaun said. "I've had that on the Canadian Tour.  I played great one year, then I lost my card the next year, probably like 2014, went to Q-School for Canada Tour, PGA Tour Canada at the time, Mackenzie Tour, then came back next year and won the Order of Merit.  

 "Then the next year finished third on the Korn Ferry Tour, got my PGA TOUR card and was off and running the next few years.  My fifth year on tour, lost my card there, struggled all season.  Then went down to the first playoff event on the Korn Ferry at Boise, fought back, finished second, got my card back in the first event, then came back the next year on the PGA TOUR, won the Valero.

 "It's just crazy.  It's like all this back and forth in my career. Then kind of what happened last year the first half of the year, kind of slumping, falling down, and getting back up. 

 "There's a Confucius - yeah, Confucius quote.  He says - God, I'm going to butcher this.  Maybe you guys can correct me. 

 "Something like the glory isn't for how high you get or something, but it's more about the rise when you get pushed down or something like that.  The glory isn't for how high you get in your peaks, it's more of like when you bounce back, that's where it's at.  That's kind of, I feel like, my career."

The quote is "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall."

It took until August, 2016 for Spaun to reach a ranking in the top 200 in the world, rising as high as 103 a year later. By 2019, however, he once again fell out of the top 200, tumbling all the the way to 584th in the world by May, 2021. 

From there Spaun reversed course, playing well enough to work his way back into the top 100 by the following April, reaching No. 61 by the opening weeks of 2024. That's when Spaun hit the bad patch of golf he described at the U.S. Open, falling to 164th in the world last June. He again reversed things in the second half of 2024 and played his way back up to No. 77 by this past January, and became a top-30 player in world in March with a second-place finish at Cognizant. He was ranked 25th in the world going into last week's U.S. Open. 

J.J. Spaun is now ranked 8th in the world.