In a sport where seconds can lead to wild fluctuations in form, 96 minutes is an eternity for unthinkable things to happen.

A weather system moved in from the south and dropped bucketloads of rain over Oakmont Golf Club on Sunday evening. At 1601 hours, when the USGA blew the horn and suspended Sunday’s final round of the 125th U.S. Open, Sam Burns was still leading at 2-under par on the eighth tee, with Adam Scott one behind playing alongside him.

Nobody else was in the red numbers, and JJ Spaun, who started the day in disastrous fashion with five bogeys in six holes, had slipped far away from everyone’s thoughts when play resumed.

Already being called the toughest golf course ever to stage a major championship ever, Oakmont added a lot of bite in those 96 minutes. The water-logged fairways had no run in them, making the course play even longer, and the soggy rough and wet bunkers started creating havoc.

Something else happened as the players spent an hour inside the elegant old Scottish farmhouse-style clubhouse waiting for the rain to subside. The 34-year-old Spaun rediscovered the fortitude that helped him shoot a bogey-free four-under 66 on the opening day. It’s the same quality that helped him climb 576 places in the Official World Golf Ranking from the time in 2021, when he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and lost his PGA Tour card, to rise to World No. 8 this week.

Not many players would have been able to get over the tough break Spaun got on the second hole. His approach shot from 94 yards seemed perfect. It pitched about 4 feet short of the pin, hopped, and should have spun back to gimme distance for a birdie. Instead, it smacked into the flagpole and ricocheted off the green for a bogey.

Perhaps, those were the demons that Spaun sat and slayed in the forced downtime. Or, he could have harvested the confidence that comes from playing just two solid, consecutive pars at Oakmont (seventh and eighth). But when he came out, just like his new set of dry clothing, Spaun was a changed man.

In the remaining 10 holes, he made four birdies and a solitary bogey to finish as the only player with under-par aggregate.

Millions of viewers will probably remember his 64-feet five-inch birdie putt on the 18th hole as the abiding memory of his heroics. But the shot that defined Spaun’s week was the tee shot on the 17th. It’s a drivable par-4 at 317 yards, but there are five bunkers surrounding the green. Just moments earlier, England’s Tyrrell Hatton lost the tournament with a bogey from the right rough.

To pull out the driver was a leap of faith for Spaun, and he produced a cracker. That shot set up the birdie on the 17th and gave him a one-shot lead over Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre. He would later call it the 309-yard ‘nice little cut’ the best he has ever hit.

The birdie on the 18th was a grandstand finish and did manage to elicit an appreciative chuckle from the usually grumpy Hatton and applause from MacIntyre, even though he lost the chance to get into a playoff.

Spaun had just a single victory on the PGA Tour before Sunday: the 2022 Valero Texas Open. But he has been trending in the right direction this year, and that included taking a red-hot Rory McIlroy into a playoff at the Players Championship in March. He kept insisting that his tee shot on the 17th hole—which went long and into water for a triple bogey and handed the win to the Northern Irishman—wasn’t a mistake, or a ‘choke’, as many saw it to be. And now he’s proved it.

The word most experts tend to attach with Spaun is ‘journeyman’ – someone who is a reliable performer, but rarely outstanding. All that will surely change to something more meaningful now. Not only did he finish ahead of the best players in the world, but he did it at Oakmont. It’s a badge of honour that he can wear with pride for the rest of his life.

— Guest Editor (Joy Chakravarty)

Your U.S. Open feed was likely stuck on the two top contenders. Sam Burns and Adam Scott. J.J. Spaun entered the scene late. But in between, a bunch of players led the charge. From Russell Henley to Carlos Ortiz, here are five performers who probably definitely flew under your radar:

5. Russell Henley (T10): Henley is one of the best iron players on the PGA Tour. An envious quality when you are teeing off at a course where missing the greens is a penal offense. Henley’s Titleist T200 and T100 did a pretty good job of landing him in 48 of the 72 greens in regulation. Capitalizing on that, he walked away with T10 from Oakmont.

4. Ben Griffin (T10): You should take Griffin more seriously. Eight top tens this season, a team win, an individual win, and now a spectacular US Open debut. Griffin finished at 5-over for the week, his second top-ten in a major. Think of the fact that in 2021, Griffin quit golf to become a loan officer. Four years later, he is pulling off walk-in putts at the greatest stage of golf.

3. Carlos Ortiz (T4): The Mexican LIV Golfer is the only qualifier to post a top-ten finish at this year’s U.S. Open. Ortiz was threateningly close to toppling all predictions yesterday, but a double on the 15th and an agonizing dearth of circles on his scorecard stopped him at T4—the best major finish of his career yet.

2. Tyrrell Hatton (T4): Hatton loves U.S. Open. Not because he is particularly fond of tackling remorseless beasts. But everyone loses their head at the U.S. Open, which Hatton called his normal state of mind. He did have his hot-tempered moments, of course, but redeemed them all with this heartwarming gesture for the champ. He also grabbed his best major finish with the 3-over at Oakmont.

1. Robert MacIntyre (T2): You didn’t notice him sneaking in, right? Yeah, no one did. MacIntyre started seven shots off the 54-hole leader, Sam Burns. A 2-under 68 on Sunday and some baffling snafus from Burns and a disputable rule gaffe later, the youngster was sitting in the clubhouse as a potential champion. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Had MacIntyre won, it would’ve been the best comeback since Arnold Palmer at the 1960 U.S. Open.

Honorary mention: Justin Hastings of the Cayman Islands left Oakmont with the low amateur silver medal wrapped around his neck, as you can see here. He was the first from the Caribbean nation to tee off at the U.S. Open. He was also the only amateur to book a weekend spot at Oakmont. He finished at 15-over for a tie for 55th. Oh, he is also a San Diego State product like Spaun.

And with that, we conclude our U.S. Open coverage. Stay tuned for your regular Thursday one, though. Off to Colonial now!