#bengriffin #pgatour #jjspaun #pgatour #travelerschampionship
Ben Griffin was full of praise for 2025 U.S. Open champion JJ Spaun ahead of the Travelers Championship, calling his win at Oakmont “amazing” and drawing parallels between their career journeys. Griffin opened up about the challenges he’s faced and why Spaun’s breakthrough win hits close to home.
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we are joined here with Ben Griffin at the Travelers Championship ben making your third consecutive start what is like to be teening up here at TC River Highlands only three that’s weird for me it’s normally like 12 in a row um yeah it feels good um excited to be back at the Travelers Championship one of the fan um I’d say player favorites of the year um they treat us so well um really excited to play a golf course that’s not quite as demanding as the last few weeks um it’ll uh Oh you said third time at Travel travel is here yeah i thought it was three events in a row it’s actually only two in a row this is like nothing um anyways yeah uh great uh great event travelers does an amazing job um really excited to tee it up uh against the best players in the world and um hopefully get in the mix again already eight top 10s including two wins this season and a top 10 last week how are you feeling entering the week yeah I think I’m feeling pretty good um game’s been game’s in a really good spot um had the results recently um it’s really nice because this game can be very difficult from time to time and you can have some good weeks that are maybe 20th so it’s nice for me to see some um some high results in and big events um just trying to continue to to do this the same things I’ve been doing um continue to work hard and um try to get try to get back in the mix and get in contention again and I wasn’t in the final group last week and was in my previous two starts so try to get back into that that mode it’s It’s really fun to compete on tour and be in the mix on Sundays perfect we’re going to go ahead and open up we have uh Kevin with microphone hey Ben um I was wondering in terms of your typical rough recovery routine between tournaments kind of Sunday night Monday what that kind of looks like in terms of the things you try to do every week and then after the US Open is it more particularly important to hone in on that after a grueling week yeah um I always try to take off at least a majority of one day um coming off a a tournament um so you know going back to the start of the season I played I think 12 or 13 events in a row or something like that um so generally speaking we’ll fly out Sunday night or Monday morning um just depending on the flight situation and then Mondays are typically kind of an off day um if it’s a course that I’m not as familiar with or has made changes I might chip and putt some um otherwise not really swinging a club on Monday still goes back into the gym i’m in the gym every single day um doing physio work every day except for Sundays after my physio travels um after the round after I tea off on Sundays so I see him Monday so normally do a little bit more physio work um if needed um but yeah I uh Monday Tuesday Wednesdays are hard days in the gym um try to get sore and then Thursday through Sunday uh still pretty hard but try not to get too sore um and just kind of continue on that momentum but from a golf standpoint it’s normally nine holes on Tuesday afternoon late so last night I went out at about 4:45 p.m uh just me and the grounds crew hanging out um not really a whole lot of players out there but it’s kind of peaceful for me to do that so I try to do that as often as possible um other weeks I might go at like 1 or 2 o’clock and play with you know my college roommate or college teammate Ryan Gerard i play a lot with him he kind of has gotten on a similar schedule as me nine holes Wednesday proam and then kind of back back to it but I try not to play 18 holes um consecutively on any given day um until a tournament time so typically just nine holes and going back to US Open was nine holes Sunday Monday Tuesday and Wednesday just kind of keeping the days relatively short although those practice round days the nine holes could take as much as three and a half hours so um yeah I’m pretty consistent i don’t really change a whole lot the only thing that can vary is the the travel day depending on what event was prior and how far I’ve got to really travel so traveling stuff on tour um you know you’re on your own so you got to try to figure out what’s best for you and do you do any sort of like recapping tournaments in terms of delving into stats or journaling or thinking about stuff in terms of how you process the week that was or do you pretty much just go right on yeah I’m not a huge stats guy i’m I’m really self-aware of kind of how my game is i don’t necessarily need to go and look at stats to know what probably wasn’t going my way the previous week or what I needed to work on so um I don’t really look at a lot of the shot length data or different things like that recently I’ve been looking at more of the driving distance in comparison to other players so like last week the US Open was fourth in distance my goal is to try to get as close to first as I can um right now this season by the end of the year so just been trying to set little mini goals kind of like that maybe with the stats um clean up the putter a little bit you know last week I I struggled with a lot of three putts but I made a lot of putts so even though um and that’s kind of a self-aware thing like I knew I struggled maybe with some lacks from time to time but like my 15footers that I needed to save for par I was making a lot of them so um a week like this I need to clean up kind of those four five sixfooters and maybe um make sure I got the speed dialed a little bit more on these greens um but uh a test like here at TBC River Highlands is a lot easier to figure out compared to Oakmont so um yeah you um mentioned the driving distance goal i know it can be relative based on how far you want to push up at different times because last year I think you were outside top 100 in driving distance how I guess last year how close like if you were going all out where would do you think you would have ranked last year 70 very very much so middle maybe slightly above average and um yeah it’s been a it’s been a good goal of mine to try to increase that um I’ve watched way too many tournaments um seeing Roy Moy just overpower golf courses and take bunkers out of play and you know there’s a lot of talk about the ball roll back and other um top hot topics like that about golf course design and you know us player c certain players aren’t playing the courses how they’re kind of designed but for me as a player I’ve got to take advantage of the opportunity to be able to do that and so um it’s been really fun to try to train harder and be more conscious of of swinging harder and trying to make golf as easy as possible because it’s a very difficult game all right we have Keith ben uh oddly enough I was going to ask you a goal question and you just used the word like five times but are you the type of person that sets or player that sets goals season long goals at the start of this the year um I don’t set goals related to winning or um like making a writer cut i I won’t set specific goals like that but I’ll set goals daily um of what I kind of want to achieve on the day and also maybe on like a weekly basis of what maybe I need to work on mentally to be in a better frame of mind to play better certain things like that but nothing that compares me to other players i won’t set goals like that i only set self goals that I can control all right I’ll change gears then um let’s go back to Mexico did something click around that time this year or was it something you were building towards and then you were finally like I’m starting to really get this but it was a week by week thing versus like it seems like after you know like if we if we look at your season like a switch flip there and next thing you know you’re winning multiple times you’re eighth on the RDER Cup list you know like things are happening yeah historically I struggle on the West Coast um I don’t know if it’s the the type of golf I’m just not that I didn’t grow up playing Poana Greens i I didn’t grow up playing much golf on the West Coast and I I’ve historically struggled the last couple years however this year I was playing physically i felt like my game was in really good place not only at Tori but Pebble and um uh you know Tori again when we went back and I wasn’t finishing very high but I knew my game was really good and I knew I needed to and I was struggling with my putting um my my putter my putting stats were were bad and I knew I was struggling with it out there but I knew once I got away from Poana Greens that I was going to putt really well so I was never worried um it just was a matter of getting through the West Coast swing and getting into courses that I like a little bit more and greens and grasses that I’m more familiar with so going to Mexico um being um past Palum grass um very familiar with that um I lived in Sea Island Georgia for majority of the last six years and the plantation course there is Pass Palum Greens and um I have the course record there i love that golf course and I knew going to Mexico I was going to putt well and it just came down to Mexico hitting it far that’s more of a bombers golf course and that was kind of right when I started training so I actually wasn’t hitting it that far as as far i was pretty much middle of the pack um but I still finished fourth um and then as I continued to train and get stronger some of those course some courses that I I like got a little bit easier putting’s still good um so yeah I mean after Mexico I went to the Florida swing love the Florida swing love Bermuda grass putt really well on that grass really good out of uh judging lies out of the rough so if I miss fairways or around the greens I’m really good at that that type of stuff um so I knew I was going to play well there and then kind of just progressed and then um was playing was honestly playing very well i just was 51 in the world didn’t get the Masters i think I could have easily played really well at the Masters but I just had to kind of wait to to win and then same with RBC Heritage i felt really good about my game but I had backto-back off weeks there and I was first alternate didn’t get in the field was kind of bummed andrew finishes Novak finished second so I know he’s playing really well i know I’m playing well even though I hadn’t played two weeks in a row and so when we went to Zurich I knew it was going to be a really good week for both of us um Andrew definitely helped me a lot early in the week he was playing phenomenal and then we did a really good job um I played really well on the the weekend on Saturday and then um alternate shot and so we ham and egged it perfect which is what you have to do at that event but yeah I mean now going to the rest of the year I mean all these I love the the rest of the the summer in terms of the golf courses the the types of grass that I’m playing on i just I’ve struggled on the West Coast swing so I’m pretty much every year on tour I I’ve haven’t gotten off to that great of a start i always play well at the AMX i always play well at um Sony Open um so the AMX I finished top 10 the last two years sony Open i think I have maybe a top 10 and this year I didn’t play great on Sunday and probably finish middle of the pack but um I think Sony Open I haven’t played as well just coming off an offseason i just need to be a little bit more sharper so be interesting this year playing Maui and then going into that um I’m sure I’ll probably play a lot better at Sony um but yeah sorry that was a really long answer but um yeah I just kind of kept going great stuff yeah probably some good juicy stuff back to Kevin um kind of a random one but what are you aware or what would you guess the record PGA Tour sanctioned golf for most consecutive birdies in a row in a round most consecutive ever i mean it’s got to be seven or eight nine so that was set in 1994 and I you know so much scores have gotten lower and lower in a lot of different ways and stats you measure but that one has kind of locked at nine and I’m curious what your take would be on why that is the record with how good you guys are no one’s ever made more than nine in a row um I don’t know necessar What year was that 1994 yeah so I got to imagine golf courses weren’t as firm greens weren’t as aren’t weren’t as fast um and the rough wasn’t as penal back in 1994 as it is nowadays nowadays I think with technology um superintendent and um you know rules officials and staff setting up golf courses has to have to be really strategic to make it really challenging for the modern day golfers um so you got to have thick rough you have to have firm greens you have to maybe tuck the pins maybe a little bit more so I think that’s probably why that record who’s been the closest has there has there been like seven in a row in the last couple years i’m sure there maybe has yeah and then here it was a few years ago but Kevin Stillman made seven in a row to win 123 that’s right that was nuts um yeah I think it’s just probably setup course setup is probably a little more challenging so whereas maybe in 1994 it was a little bit easier to get on a green and have a good chance to to make putts you just had to get high with the putter whereas nowadays you can be on some of these greens and have crazy putts or you just barely miss a fairway and it’s just like you you can’t really get it on the green whereas maybe in 1994 you could could get it on the green from the rough so I’d say that’s probably why that stat has has held up um who who did it omar Ursty man he must have Yeah it’s uh that’s pretty cool that’s a cool um cool staff for him to have i don’t I don’t think he’s uh in danger probably um as long as we’re playing difficult golf courses although this week this is as soft and I shouldn’t say slow because the greens are still fast but um the course feels the most scorable I’ve ever seen it since I I started coming here so I feel like this could be a year where maybe not nine in a row but the winning score could be maybe a record breaker i don’t know what the lowest winning score is ever here but probably 24 25 26 under i could easily see that this week and then a different topic um JJ Spawn winning the US Open i know he had talked about thinking about stepping away and calling his college coach for a teaching job and I know you have a a similar experience of feeling almost a little burned out earlier in your career and I was wondering I guess first of all what you know about JJ and if you’ve spent any time with him and then just what his story kind of does just seeing it as a fellow pro yeah I mean that was amazing he’s the American Nick Taylor right now um winning the national open with a bomb on 18 so cool uh such an amazing moment um I didn’t see it live unfortunately I was driving but I I got a few text messages right when it happened and and saw the footage shortly after that when I when I got done driving to the airport but um yeah such an amazing amazing finish for him and uh you know he his his stories yeah very similar to mine i mean he played in on the Mackenzie tour um the Canadian Tour now it’s the PGA America’s Tour um he won the same event that I won um the Thunder Bay Stall Open and he won it three years four or five years prior to me maybe um and yeah it’s uh it’s really cool to see you know he’s had a a really good year and obviously what happened at the players um I think was probably a little tough on him um just the way it went down in the playoff even though it was extremely difficult conditions and I know as a player just how tough it was probably to judge that shot on 17 um you know no not many people play in conditions like PJ Tour players do when you have grandstands and where you don’t really have flags showing the wind and the wind you have these little wind tunnels that kind of go through grandstand areas and it’s it’s just really tough if he hits it super low the wind’s not going to touch it and if he hits it high it’s going to get smoked um but yeah such an amazing moment so happy for him i’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the last few years being on the PJ tour um he’s an amazing guy and um couldn’t be happier for him and his his caddyy Mark Karens getting the job done and um and winning there because it was I mean I I finished at five over par but there was a moment there coming down the stretch after I birdied 16 where I was like man if I could eagle 17 birdie 18 and post two two over like you never know right now because the scores were just coming back so much so um I thought the I thought it was a very fair test and I thought thought it was awesome that he was able to execute some really high quality shots down the stretch and make birdies and yeah I I don’t know what he was feeling on that 70footer but I know if I was in that position it’s it’s one of those putts where you’re just like just somehow get it up there on the right tier and have three four five feet and you’re doing an incredible job and to make it i mean that’s that’s one of the coolest moments in sports in my opinion perfect that’s all we have ben thank you for the time good luck this week thank you all right all right all right
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Something about that Staal Foundation… 🇨🇦❤️🦫