Before becoming the U.S. Open champion on Sunday, JJ Spaun told his wife that they should quickly head to the Travelers Championship in New York City, which was captured today in Cromwell, Connecticut.
She didn’t believe it, although the trip proved essential.
Spaun ended the 2025 U.S. Open with two wins of 72, ending one point overall and defeating Robert MacIntyre twice. It has been a whirlwind ever since. A large part of this is the champion’s media tour in New York.
“It’s crazy. I dropped the green again around 8:45 pm and went back to the green and did the whole ceremony formalities, signed a bunch of souvenirs, obviously got the trophy and saw it being carved.” “USGA did a great job, giving us our own little space to hang out all night until we wanted to leave. We didn’t leave until 1 a.m.”
Back to where he lives in Pittsburgh, Spaun quickly showered and then tried to catch up with all the text messages and calls he received. He heard letters from George Lopez, Mookie Betts, Scott Van Pelts, Curtis Strange, Hale Irwin and many others. He only slept for about three hours Sunday night.
“Then we went to New York City,” he said. “We had dinner with my family on Monday night. We went to Tuesday at 6 a.m. for all the media. There was no end – it was actually uninterrupted. It didn’t end until 3:30 p.m., hop in and drive here. That was about 3 1/2 hours. It wasn’t until 8 p.m. The front door of the hotel didn’t walk past.
“I finally slept well, though. I slept for about eight hours and that was great. The last two nights I got the same sum as last night.”
It’s a life-changing week for Spaun, and now more doors are starting to open. He is ranked sixth in the FedEx Cup standings (he has never played in the Tour Championship) and third in the Ryder Cup standings (he has never been a team).
That Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley has some advice on Spaun this week. Bradley won the 2011 PGA title in his debut.
“I think it’s possible to say that winning the U.S. Open will have a huge boost to this inner self to keep this confidence alive and burning,” Spaun said. “I need to enjoy that, like Keegan told me yesterday. He said, ‘You need to enjoy it. Do your best to enjoy it. It’s easy to let it go out the window and go straight to next week, forget about it for a while, but try to enjoy it.”
“I plan to enjoy it next week, which is for sure. At least next week.”
The Travelers are the last signature event of the season, in Connecticut’s TPC River Heights. The Golf Channel TV broadcast began Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. Spaun paired with world number one Scottie Scheffler in the first two rounds. They will kick off at 1:45 pm ET on Thursday.
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