J.J. Spaun faced his first big moment on a big stage in golf and he wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t even have a club in his hand. Spaun was a 26-year-old PGA Tour rookie at Torrey Pines in 2017. He was not eligible for the pro-am and wanted to see the North course when he came across an enormous crowd that could mean only one thing: Tiger Woods.

When sheets of rain descended upon Oakmont on Sunday afternoon and an army of groundskeepers started taking squeegees and towels to the fairways, a tumultuous finish and bizarre turn became inevitable at this U.