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3. Not all U.S. Opens are uglied up, but some of the best ones are. Spieth in 2015. Brooks in 2018. It’s not supposed to be pretty. If it was supposed to be pretty, it would be played on the second week of April. The USGA has shied away from super ugly events of late, and so the weather and the course have to do their part.

They obliged, and it ruled.

Spaun emerged after a 40 (FORTY!) going out. Who shoots 40-32 to win a major championship?!

That 40-32 was a microcosm of his career.

This time last year, he had missed the cut at these 10 events for the season.

Sony
Torrey
Phoenix
Riv
Mexico
Valspar
Zurich
Dallas
Colonial
Canada

The rest of it was no better. Zero top 20s. Just one finish even in the top 30 (a lowly T26 at the Myrtle Beach Classic). He was ranked outside the top 160 on Data Golf. To be honest, it’s sort of shocking that he was even that high.

I might as well go down swinging.

If a tournament is canines only, Spaun qualifies.

And while getting DJ or Scottie or Bryson or Rory is obviously a terrific outcome and a more memorable occasion, getting a dog who just goes and gets his national championship is aspirational as hell. Because if J.J. Spaun — who couldn’t find a weekend one year ago — can rebound from the brink to find a U.S. Open win?

I mean … what else is possible?

Superstars provide inaccessible glory. It’s fun to talk about and put into the canon.

J.J. Spauns, though, they provide hope.

And that’s a very different thing altogether.

4. Spaun said Max Homa told him a story recently that Tiger told Max.

It was basically this but for golf …

Here’s what Spaun relayed on Sunday.

Go on.

That “all those things came true” gives me chills. What a dog.

What a perfect emblematic moment for someone whose career isn’t as much under-appreciated as it is not even thought about at all.

5. Also if we’re going to talk about the putt, we need to talk about the swing on 17. I’m gonna be thinking about that one when we get a JJ-Xander four ball pairing against Hatton and Rahm on Saturday at Bethpage. There’s always one swing every major that takes your breath away. His on 17 was unquestionably this week’s.

Whew.

6. I guess we should talk about my feet (did not wake up envisioning typing that). I spent most of the early afternoon running around with Scottie, trying to see if we were going to get a full Johnny Miller from the three-time champ. We didn’t (though I’m still not sure he’s out of it yet!).

So we came in from the rain and tried to figure, amid the chaos, who to go with next.

With two hours left, you could have convinced me that two different Rasmuses, either of the guys staying at the Burns-Scheffler house, or multiple members of Legion XIII were going to win the tournament. You could have talked me into Rory!*

Ultimately, I decided on Burns-Scott and picked them up on 15 tee. As I walked up to their second shots, Burns was talking to a rules official about his lie, and he eventually called another one over — although amusingly he tried to call a media member who was dressed, conspicuously, like a rules official. Both actual officials denied him relief for temporary water, and he ended up hitting the worst shot of the day and making double.

I wandered over after he walked away and took a video of the ground that contained his divot. The whole time, all I’m thinking is, I absolutely do not want to put my feet and shins on Twitter. I do not know how many people are going to see this. It immediately went mega viral, and I semi panicked before going back for another shot later.

It’s easy to shoo away now because he lost by five, but that was a legitimately massive inflection point in the championship.

Burns was tied for the lead at the time this happened.

If he gets relief and makes four instead of six, who knows how the last three holes go.

*I’m kidding!

7. I refuse to get into a Rules of Golf discussion on the internet.

Here’s what I’ll say.

It must be frustrating that Scottie, who drove his ball on No. 17 into the rough, can pull it out because his stance was on a sprinkler head and then goes on to make 3 from an area that’s not the rough.

See here …

And then Burns has to hit out of this.

Given how adamant I was about playing mud balls down at the PGA, I actually probably fall more on the “play it as it lies” side of things here with Burns, but I find it outrageous that Scheffler (who was playing by the rules) doesn’t have to play it down.

That’s just not equitable, and it happens so often. There has to be some solution where you can move away from a sprinkler head but not drag your ball out of the rough.

Anyway, I’m not delighted that my feet went viral but I was glad to get lucky and be in the right place at the right time on Sunday evening.

Also … normal sport.

8. Speaking of the weather, for sure going to make this into a hat.

Outdoor Sport, baby.

OTDR SPRT!

9. Bob Mac. The boy from Oban. He nearly did the dang thing.

After making bogey at No. 1 and No. 3 to go to +5 while Spaun was warming up on the range still at -3, Bob Mac was (I believe at one point) down eight to the eventual champ with just 16 holes to go. And he nearly pushed it to a Monday playoff.

My hope for Bob of course is that he gets an Open. A Scot winning the Open in Scotland? And an emotional one like Bob at that. Man, I’m not sure I could take it. I’m not sure he could either.

After he finished up and had to watch Spaun stomp on his soul — not the first time he got his soul stomped on in a massive event by someone who was in the 2025 Players Championship playoff — Bob gave a jewel of a quote.

Golf, baby. The best.

Spaun.

Bob.

Dogs.

Also, this absolutely ruled.

And will obviously be an all-time meme. Already is actually.

10. I asked Spaun if he had his “Shane Lowry staring in the mirror wondering if he had what it took to win a U.S. Open” moment on Sunday morning, and I got an answer I didn’t expect.

Spaun said his wife was up at 3 a.m. on Sunday telling him that one of his daughters were throwing up. He headed to CVS at some point after that to get medication to quell the illness.

Walking up and down the aisles at CVS, no clue what you’re looking for. Googling, angry that this is how you’re spending time in the middle of the night (or early morning).

We’ve all been there!

Of course, usually that ends in a 12-hour squabble with your spouse. In this case, it ended with the U.S. Open trophy in his hands. The most dad life day in dad life history.

The card [best enjoyed in your loudest Bob Parson’s voice] that surely led to J.J.’s drive on 17.

11. I felt for Burns. I felt for everyone. Behind scoring, after media, they all looked like they’d been through something they never wanted to go through again. Burns and his wife looked to be barely holding it all together. He walked out of the locker room bear hugging his boy, eyes a little redder than they were at the beginning of the day, a little puffier than they’d been all week.

Not all is lost. Burns took a step forward this week and solidified his place on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

I’ve been yelling about this all week, but he’s easy to root for to me because it can’t be easy to room with one of the 20 best players of all time on the road at these things.

Scottie talked about their morning. I thought it was cool.

Nobody asked him by the way.

12. Speaking of Scottie … I somehow had both of the following thoughts on Sunday afternoon.

1. How on earth is he still alive and in this golf tournament?
2. How on earth is he not up by seven shots?!

On the week, he finished 54 of 59 on putts inside of 5 feet. This sounds great for clowns like you and me, but that placed him T62 in a field of 66. Only Sungjae (6), Morikawa (7) and Pavon (7) missed more.

For context, Burns went 58 for 58. Russell Henley went 60 for 60.

Agreed.

One of the most impressive things about Scottie is that he can win the Nelson at 90 under par, and he can also contend at Oakmont when guys are holding on for dear life around E. Those are wildly different gears, and he has both at the highest level.

Winning a U.S. Open feels impossible, and this was a tremendous chance for somebody who’s playing the best golf anyone has played in the last 20ish years. You don’t get a ton of those, and he hit it well enough to be a lot more in the mix than he actually was.

It would be foolish to say Scottie will never win a U.S. Open — he may win three of them! — but this was definitely a miss he’ll look back on as one he probably should have at least had a look at.

13. I called my dad on Sunday morning. He asked me how my experience was compared to 2016. Porath and I talked about this a bit as well as we walked around the property on Sunday. Passage of time.

That was a long time ago. Two kids ago. A job and a half ago. Lots of missteps and failures and triumphs and humility and joy and sadness ago.

It won’t necessarily feel like this as golf moves on to the very next thing this week at the Travelers, but each of these majors is so special. When they showed the Tiger 2008 one during the rain delay, it felt like a different lifetime. We were talking in the media tent while rain pummeled the top of the tent about where we were and what we were doing. A lot of us were in college then.

It all happens fast.

And so it was good on Sunday to stand on that 72nd hole and feel the rain dripping down my back and seeping into my now-mildly-famous shoes.

It was good to look up and look around at the clouds that were insistent on torturing men who had done nothing to them. It was good to hold my breath while Spaun putted and to let my jaw drop and my eyes widen as he made order from chaos and threw his putter straight into Oakmont history.

There are just so few of them.

It was good to see what hope looks like.

And what it sounds and feels like, too.

Thank you for reading until the end.

You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 3,239 words (!!) long and partially about my feet. Thank you for supporting our business and sending me to Oakmont to cover the U.S. Open this week. We are grateful for that.