J.J. Spaun reached the peak of professional golf when he holed a 64-foot putt to win his first career major championship at the 2025 U.S. Open. Amazingly, his life-changing triumph at Oakmont Country Club may not have been possible if he hadn't been run over by a car when he was a child.
Yeah, seriously.
When Spaun was younger, his dream was to grow up and become a professional skateboarder. Golf was always a passion of his, passed down from his parents, but his heart was on the halfpipe first.
As Spaun recently explained on the Pardon My Take podcast, that all changed one day when a skate session with his friends turned into a near-death experience.
"Yeah, it was crazy. I could possibly not be sitting here right now if it was one second sooner or later," Spaun said. "I kind of went right under this car and literally was sitting under it. The lady thought she ran over a cat. We were just kids. It was like 1995. Kids play out in the front yard, and here I am rolling down on this skateboard—I think I was like on my knees doing something stupid. Everyone is screaming, dad pulls me out, I have all this grease and oil all over me."
Thankfully, Spaun didn't suffer any major injuries. The accident did, however, force him to rethink skating as a future profession. Soon after, golf took over as his new passion.
"Yeah, that freaked me out. That definitely scared me. I definitely had scar tissue on what I was trying to accomplish skateboarding," he said. "That was more of my bigger aspiration was to be a pro skater—be like Andrew Reynolds, Erik Ellington, and Tony Hawk growing up."
"Crazy moment, but, yup, I still kept skateboarding, and still loved it, but I'm glad I took golf over it instead."
Getting run over by a car propelled J.J. Spaun to a U.S. Open title
Every angle of J.J. Spaun's putt to win the U.S. Open 👏 pic.twitter.com/13SW4ngCl7
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 16, 2025
After shifting his focus from skateboarding to golf, Spaun quickly learned he had what it took to advance to the next level. He continued his career at San Diego State University, where he won the Mountain West Conference Player of the Year award in 2012.
Spaun turned pro immediately after graduating from SDSU. He began his professional golf career on PGA Tour Canada, but it took him four years to advance to the Web.com Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour). From there, it took him only one season to earn his PGA Tour card for the first time.
Spaun finished 185th in the FedEx Cup standings in 2019-20, which should've pushed him back down to the Korn Ferry Tour. Luckily for him, though, the PGA Tour didn't uphold its typical policy that season due to the COVID-19 pandemic shortening the season.
He dodged another close call in 2020-21 when he finished 174th in the FedEx Cup standings but kept his PGA Tour card by qualifying through the KFT Finals.
Spaun never gave up through all the adversity he faced early in his career, and now he can call himself a U.S. Open champion.