JJ Spaun said he is learning to “embrace” his elevated status in golf as he prepares for the Open Championship at Royal Portrush.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old won the US Open at Oakmont last month and is now ranked number 10 in the world having previously only won once on the PGA Tour. <\/p>\n
Thirteen years after turning professional, the American’s first major victory, as well as losing a play-off to Rory McIlroy at The Players Championship in March, have hugely lifted his profile and he has been paired in a group alongside two-time major champions Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele at Portrush.<\/p>\n
“I never thought I would win a major – a few years ago I was just trying to get in them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a big difference, having the spotlight on me now and the expectations, but all I can do is just rely on the experiences I’ve had – coming down the stretch at the US Open, getting myself in the play-off at The Players Championship.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had way bigger challenges – whether it’s life or golf or losing my card – than just being more in the spotlight, so I’m learning to embrace it.”<\/p>\n
The 153rd Open will be Spaun’s debut at the championship, and he missed the cut at the Scottish Open last weekend as he becomes accustomed to the different “challenge” of links golf.<\/p>\n
“You kind of want to play everything airborne in America,” he added.<\/p>\n
“Pick your number, try to fly it there, and hopefully it spins and stops near the hole.<\/p>\n
“But links golf requires a lot more creativity, imagination, so learning to flight shots better and trying to guess bounces correctly is going to be sort of the challenge this week. Also, the elements.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JJ Spaun said he is learning to “embrace” his elevated status in golf as he prepares for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}