J.J. Spaun Takes A Long Road Of Hard Work To Become US Open Champion

OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — J.J. Spaun faced his first big moment on a big stage in golf and he wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t even have a club in his hand. Spaun was a 26-year-old PGA Tour rookie at Torrey Pines in 2017. He was not eligible for the pro-am and wanted to see the North course when he came across an enormous crowd that could mean only one thing: Tiger Woods. He was walking along the edge of the fairway when Amy Bartlett, a Nike representative, spotted him and offered a chance to meet Woods. Spaun shook his head and took a step back. Bartlett laughed and dragged him over. “I was too scared,” Spaun said a few weeks later. “I didn’t want to bug him.” Woods was gracious, as he often was with young players. For Spaun to imagine then that their names would be on the same piece of hardware — a silver U.S. Open trophy — would have been hard to fathom. “I never thought I would be here holding this trophy,” he said in the Sunday twilight at soaked Oakmont during the trophy presentation. “I always had aspirations and dreams. I never knew what my ceiling was.” Spaun
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