When professional golfer J.J. Spaun sank a 64-foot birdie putt to win the U.S. Open on Sunday, his life changed forever.

So did Adam Schriber’s.

A noted golf coach with a history of sending athletes to PGA and LPGA Tour events, Schriber has also been the director of instruction at LochenHeath Golf Club in Williamsburg since 2014. This year, he’s been splitting time between LochenHeath – where he often brings PGA golfers for training sessions – and the sidelines of the PGA Tour, where Spaun has been making waves and turning heads.

A 34-year-old American professional golfer, Spaun marked his rookie season on the PGA Tour in 2016-17, and has been working with Schriber as his coach since 2022. Spaun has since recorded numerous top-10 finishes on the tour, and even qualified for a few majors – he had his Masters debut in 2022, finishing tied for 23rd – but it wasn’t until this year that he started grabbing big headlines. In January, Spaun led the Sony Open in Hawaii going into the final round, ultimately finishing third. In March, he was runner-up at The Players Championship, losing to Rory Mcllroy in a sudden-death playoff.

But it was last weekend that Spaun finally inked his name on the pages of golf history. Battling stormy conditions at the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, Spaun held off challenges from fellow American golfer Sam Burns, former world number one superstar Adam Scott, and ultimate runner-up Robert MacIntyre of Scotland to win the tournament by two strokes.

Spaun’s name wasn’t one that oddsmakers were bandying about as a contender heading into last weekend, and most experts weren’t picking him to win even after he’d hung around near the top of the leaderboard for the first three rounds of play. When asked for his reaction to Spaun’s “unexpected” victory, though, Schriber pushes back on that characterization.

“It wasn’t unexpected for us,” Schriber tells The Ticker. “It was all a part of our plan.”

Even if “win a major tournament” was on the to-do list, best-laid plans can easily fall apart on the golf course, especially when Mother Nature gets involved. Such was the case at Oakmont, where play was suspended twice due to lightning and heavy rain. In Spaun’s case, the second rain delay – which hit in the middle of Sunday’s final round – may actually have been a blessing in disguise.

“I can’t typically talk to a player during the round, but when they have a delay like that, I can talk to them during the break,” Schriber says.

When Schriber did confer with Spaun, the golfer was in full-on despair mode. He'd entered Sunday tied for second place, with a score of 3-under-par, but then proceeded to bogey five of the first six holes, going into the rain delay at two-over-par.

“He was really frustrated; he felt like the tournament was gone,” Schriber says. “I said to him, ‘Look, you're only four shots back, you’ve got 10 holes left, and these guys are leaking oil hard behind you. If you get this thing back to even, you’ll win.’ He said to me, ‘You think so?’ And I told him, ‘I know so.’”

Schriber was right, mostly. Even par would have won the tournament, but Spaun’s four birdies across the last seven holes – including the aforementioned 64-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole – got him to 1-under-par, and a two-stroke win.

“Just to finish it off like that is just a dream," Spaun said in a post-victory interview. “You watch other people do it. You see the Tiger chip. You see Nick Taylor's putt. You see crazy moments. To have my own moment like that, at this championship, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life.”

“Obviously, you’re never trying to make it from 70 feet,” Schriber laughs, when asked about the winning shot. “You’re just trying to get close, especially in that situation, where J.J. could have two-putted to win. But making that putt is one of the possibilities, too, and it’s really cool that he actually did it.”

The win – which is Spaun’s first major title, and only his second-ever win on the PGA Tour – will surely open up new doors for the golfer. The same is likely true for Schriber, who has already gone viral in the golf world for an emotional moment he shared with Josh Gregory, Spaun’s short-game coach, right after the tourney-winning putt. If Spaun’s triumph does bring new attention to Schriber as a coach and golf personality, though, he’s hopeful he can parlay that into something good for northern Michigan and its next generation of golf talent.

“My goal up here right now is to get us a United States Golf Association (USGA) training facility, and since we just won a USGA event, there’s a big opportunity there,” Schriber says. “Right now, for the first time ever, the United States has a junior national team in golf; we’ve never had one until this year. And oddly enough, their coach is a guy named Chris Zambri, who I gave a few lessons to 20-25 years ago.”

The USGA launched its new junior golf program, called the U.S. National Development Program, in 2023, “creating the country’s first unified pathway to nurture the potential of America’s top players, starting in competitive junior golf and progressing to the pinnacles of the sport.” The program’s inaugural U.S. National Junior Team took form under Zambri’s leadership last year.

Schriber says he saw Zambri just last month at the Truist Championship in North Carolina, and that Zambri even joined him and Spaun for a few practice rounds leading into the tournament.

“I was planting seeds with him, then, about how cool Traverse City is, and how it would be the perfect place for the USGA’s Midwest Regional Training Facility,” Schriber says. “I told him how I’d love to head that facility up, and how I want to ride off into the sunset helping kids realize their dreams. And then, just a few weeks later, we win the U.S. Open? I think we’ve got a fighting chance.”

“My whole concept for the facility is that the kids would have no-cost training,” Schriber says. “I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, so for the difference-maker in golf to be money – which is usually the case – I’m not a fan of that. I want to knock down the financial barriers in golf.”

Pictured: Adam Schriber (left) and J.J. Spaun (right) pose with the U.S. Open trophy (courtesy of Adam Schriber)