SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Reigning U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun started thinking he had to become a “perfect golfer” to validate becoming a first-time major winner last summer at Pennsylvania’s Oakmont Country Club.
It only made his game worse.
Now the 35-year-old from Los Angeles is back at the U.S. Open with the same mindset that drove him to the best season of his PGA Tour career, highlighted by his victory at Oakmont, two wins in his Ryder Cup debut and a rise to the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking: That he has nothing to lose.
“I tried to just forget about trying to be this perfect golfer that I thought I was last year, when in reality I just was doing the same things,” Spaun said this week at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, where he and 155 other players will tee off Thursday in the 126th U.S. Open.
Spaun missed three cuts in his first five PGA Tour starts this year and finished no better than 40th in the other two before a mental reset in early March at The Players Championship, the tour’s flagship tournament, as he tied for 24th at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Three weeks later, he picked up the third win of his PGA Tour career by winning the Texas Open for the second time in five years.
“I just was mentally a little bit more nice to myself, I guess, and not so worried about being perfect,” Spaun said. “That’s what led to better golf.”
Spaun has two top-10 finishes in his past four events coming into the U.S. Open, tying for fifth at the Truist Championship and sixth at the Charles Schwab Challenge. He was 12th at the Memorial Tournament and failed to make it to the weekend at the PGA Championship in his other starts in that stretch.
In fact, he missed the cut at the first two majors of the year — though not by much in either case.
At the Masters in April, with the cutline at Augusta National Golf Club at 4 over, he was one of five players who were just a stroke off the pace, with Spaun opening with a 2-over 74 before shooting a 75 in which he finished birdie-bogey-birdie. Then at the PGA Championship last month at Aronimink Golf Club near Philadelphia, he squandered an opening par round of 70 with a 76 and missed it by two strokes.
“I got too caught up in thinking I was the only one putting poorly,” Spaun said. “But apparently everyone was three-putting. I think if I would have just accepted that, I would have done less three-putting and maybe it would have been a different week.”
Spaun said he has worked to improve his putting technique and has seen progress in how the ball rolls off the face of his club. He spent more than an hour practicing putting Monday at Shinnecock Hills, where notoriously fast, sloping greens had been tempered — for now — by overnight rain.
“I’ve seen some good rounds with that feel the last couple weeks at Colonial (during the Charles Schwab Challenge) and at the Memorial,” Spaun said. “I’m definitely trending on the upside with the putter.”
It was Spaun’s putter that won the U.S. Open last year at Oakmont. He sank a 65-foot putt to take the tournament by two strokes over Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre.
Even in winning, Spaun wasn’t perfect. He shot a 5-over-par 40 on the front nine before a 90-minute weather delay gave him a chance to regroup at the course near Pittsburgh. He was eight strokes better on the back nine.
Back then, Spaun really had nothing to lose. A journeyman for most of eight full PGA Tour seasons, he was in danger of losing his card a year before his U.S. Open triumph. Then he changed his game and his mindset with help from his daughter’s incessant playing of the song “Let it Go” from the 2013 animated film “Frozen.”
“That was definitely a mantra that I had kind of all year,” Spaun said. “I felt like I didn’t have anything to lose. That was what kind of carried me with this confidence, without being in those situations in the past is like, ‘Well, I have nothing to lose.’ It’s kind of easy to play that way.”
After the biggest win of his career, Spaun said, “it was the complete opposite of letting it go. I put more pressure on myself, put way more emphasis on outcome instead of just focusing on my process.”
Spaun enters what is just his third U.S. Open — he missed the cut in 2021 at San Diego’s Torrey Pines Golf Course — “trying to do the exact same thing, same blueprint” as last year.
That means having his wife and daughters by his side and living in the moment, with nothing to lose.
“We’re all kind of just hanging out and just trying to have fun and enjoy,” Spaun said. “The biggest thing for me this week is to really enjoy it.”