He quit golf. Now he’s playing his first US Open

Oakmont, Pennsylvania – Wait for a moment Ben Griffin. He couldn’t hit it in this second. The group ahead of him is still in the 10th green, but more importantly, he has taken a part of the Golf Channel with Johnson Wagner.

He was laughing. Wagner is laughing. Today is the U.S. Open, and everyone here is happy, happy and optimistic. Why don’t they do this? Now all 156 players in the field want. But Thursday’s scores began to be calculated.

Griffin wasn’t flying under the radar, either. no longer. His golf channel location proves this. He was signing and waving. A woman pointed at her Maxfli hat – he won twice this year to win the golf brand – Griffin shot back with a smile and a thumbs up.

Outside the rope, a man talks to another, summing up Griffin’s excellent stretch, and we let him bring the wheels here: He won Zurich. Then he won the colony. He almost won the damn memorial, too.

“He had a good time; he was hot right now,” the other party replied, then pausing long enough to emphasize his last point. “It’s really hot.”

So, how did Ben Griffin go from working as a desk as a mortgage official to the best story of the 2025 season, and the person who is now preparing for the U.S. public debut?

It starts in some way with itu.

“The hits them a long time.”

Growing up in North Carolina, Ben Griffin has been a great amateur player, often crossing the road with World One’s Scottie Scheffler on the junior tour. He has had a successful college career in North Carolina (one of the best scoring averages in school history) and became a career in 2018.

Over the next few years, he jumped around Canada, Latinoamerica and Korn Ferry Tours, and he started several times in the Localiq series during Covid. He won once on the Canadian PGA Tour in July 2018, but other than that, he had little success. He missed all four layoffs during the 2020-21 Latinoamerica tour.

Then, in April 2021, he competed in his last game. Burned, frustrated and trying to start making his own financial decisions, he entered the father’s office of a property management company to fill the recently resigned employee. His mom suggested that he try to become a loan officer there like her, so he accepted work, studied and obtained his license.

“When I left golf,” Griffin, 29, said Wednesday in the shadow of the Oakmont Clubhouse. “I was completely done.”

Griffin is committed to his new life, but he still can’t linger from time to time, recalling his performance as a professional. Even in college, when he won two National Honor Awards, and in high school, we won two North Carolina states individual titles.

Then what is he doing? When he’s not doing well, why not?

He spent May and June in the office and became more accustomed to work, business and pace changes. He abandoned the golfer’s button-down shirt and jacket.

Then one day in July, he got dressed, jumped into the car and drove to work – accidentally driving to the golf course. A few days later, his grandfather, Douglas Griffin, passed away. Douglas and Griffin’s father Cowan helped get Ben into the game.

Douglas Griffin’s itu prose, which reads: The motto of loving golf is “hit them long and straight”.

“When I saw this, and after I accidentally drove to the course, I was like, man, maybe I need to run again.”

Doug Sieg, CEO of Lord Abbett, Griffin’s main sponsor, has been encouraging Griffin to go to professional golf again throughout the summer. Now, after a new series of activities (and Sieger promises to take care of his financial situation for two years), Griffin is ready to return.

“It’s easy to get caught by mini golfers and get stuck like a guy, it’s so hard, my back is on the wall,” Griffin said. “So, I don’t have that mentality, but I’m already one of the best players in the world. I just have to go there to prove that.”

Griffin decided to invest in himself this time in Sieg’s financial support. What if he bought himself and the game instead of booking hotels and cars with generous gifts? He set out to surround all the tools he needed to succeed. Build a team. More importantly, he decided to work Harder. He took the course earlier. He focuses on improving nutrition and training. He took the right supplement. He has the motivation to return to Korn Ferry Tour as soon as possible.

“This line is very rare between being one of the most important players in the world,” Griffin said. “It could be a round of shooting. So I have to wake up every morning.”

In November 2021, he beat Korn Ferry Tour Q-School 71-74-64-71 to tie for 29th. The locked Korn Ferry Tour will begin in 2022 (not Monday’s qualifying anymore), where he finished 8th and won the 2023 PGA Tour card.

Griffin made 25 cuts in 37 games during his rookie season on the PGA Tour and recorded three top 10s. He entered the five-man season at Sanderson Farms but lost, but it was a huge step in the right direction. He also had a similar season in 2024, finishing second in the RBC Canadian Open, earning 25 layoffs in 35 games.

The Tour did not win the first two years, but they brought consistency in his game and routine. That’s the difference, his swing coach James Oh said.

Oh said, “He works very hard, but we have a fixed schedule.” “I can tell you that for the event four weeks from now, he will be there at noon Tuesday. Because of this routine, and because he sticks, he doesn’t search. It’s already clicking.”

This year, Griffin added more rigorous weight training to his workout. Seeing the success of brave main winners like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson motivated him to train strength, not just liquidity. He hired Derek Smidt as the trainer, who traveled with him on the way.

Now he is stronger and can hit it (he ranks 70th in driving distance), which allows him to hit more short irons for the green. He has become more aggressive with the driver and has been focusing on improving the ball speed over the past few months.

He will also attribute his short game for his success, which he says is due to his junior year job. Griffins was one of the hardest hit families during the 2008 financial crisis. The family moved and left their country club, Griffin spent more time on public routes, documenting long crumbs and practicing greens (cheaper than green fees), helping him hone a brief match that was crucial to his rise. Joining the North Carolina Men’s Golf team brings another huge bonus – he no longer has to pay for shooting.

“My parents were always growing up there, teenage golf, making sure I had the ability to keep playing golf, even if we were really tough,” Griffin said in the colony. “I don’t know what the rewards of my parents were like, but I can’t imagine having a comma. We lost a lot.”

This year, Griffin opened 65 times at the Sony Open in the first round of the third full season of the PGA Tour. A week later, he tied for seventh place on American Express. He added a back-to-back T4 in Mexico and Florida, but the main breakthrough was in New Orleans.

Duo Andrew Novak competed in the team to win the Zurich Classic, a 35-foot birdie bomb Griffin exhausted on the 71st hole. This is Griffin’s first PGA Tour champion, and it’s his 90th tour start.

“I always knew I could win, I knew I was going. It was just a matter of time when I broke through,” Griffin said. “But it was about playing golf. We played every week, and it was 156 people. You wouldn’t win a lot. Unless you win multiple times a year, you have to accept the fact that you’re going to play some really good golf, almost like a win, win, and treat those positive mindsets like a win. But, getting a huge win, but to get a win, that allowed me to win, I’m able to win my victory.

A few weeks later, Griffin recorded his first major top ten (T8 at the PGA Championship), and a week later he won again, this time at the Charles Schwab Challenge at the historic Colonial Country Club and had to overturn Scheffler in the process.

If the second victory doesn’t prove that he belongs to him, it could be the final matchup of Scheffler of the memorial built by Jack Nicklaus. Griffin was runner-up at the last start before the U.S. Open this week.

Wednesday was 4pm and Griffin finished his round in Oakmont’s 4th hole 18.

A few months ago, most golf fans might have known him because of his trademark shadow (his poor vision, so he wears our moji glasses) or the presence of social media (he has 114,000 Tiktok followers, bringing a unique perspective to fans within the rope).

Now, he has his game. He entered this week with a three-game winning streak, ranking fifth in the FedEx Cup and 15th in the world rankings. With this, he may even become a Ryder Cup team this fall.

Griffin was about 40 yards from the green and stood on his ball with a wedge. Two men sitting nearby watching the movement.

“I really like that guy,” one person told the other. “I think he will go further.”

Griffin chips, clean the club’s face and walk towards the green. The man blew and exhale on the cigar and shouted, “Good luck, Ben!”

Griffin smiled with waves. Ten minutes later, after signing each autograph and posing a photo, he was not in the sun and under the club. His first round of kickoff time in the United States was less than 24 hours away.

“It’s an incredible journey, but since I got back to golf, I’ve made myself one of the top players in the game, going into professional, competing and winning the PGA Tour,” he said. “I’ve checked a lot of these boxes now, but I have to keep on holding the pedal.”

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