STARING AT ALL THE PASTRIES INSIDE OAKMONT BAKERY, Pa. — I wanted to write two story leads. 

Of course, there were no doubt at least a dozen, the number purposefully picked in honor of where I’m now stationed — Oakmont Bakery, where boxes upon boxes filled with 12 of the doughnuts once aligned behind the shop’s glass counters are flying out of the joint nearly as fast as they can make ’em. It’s a day after a most eccentric U.S. Open final day, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all — because even the winner had more than a few storylines, and even two four-word mantras.

In recapping J.J. Spaun’s day, I eventually centered things around his thought of letting golf be golf, which to him meant golf no longer had to be all encompassing, and by buying into it, he’d essentially exhaled. But I’d also liked some advice Spaun’s coach, Adam Schriber, told the pro early Sunday afternoon as he exited Oakmont’s range, so we’ll top this story with that.  

Schriber also told his man to deflate, though, shall we say, with a bit more creative English.

“Let that f*cker go,” he said. 

Afterward Sunday, I asked Schriber what that meant. 

“It’s just trust it, you know what I mean?” he said. 

“The last thing I said to him when he went out was no regrets, right? No. We’re not gonna wonder what-if.”

Amen. 

As we look back at the U.S. Open week that was, let’s make that observation No. 1 then. We’ll try for 49 more, and we’ll be fueled by Oakmont Bakery caffeine and sugar to get us home.   

2. Let’s talk Spaun some more. Here’s another quote I liked, this one from his post-round press conference, in talking about rallying after playing his first six holes at five-over par:

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“I think it’s just perseverance. I’ve always kind of battled through whatever it may be to kind of get to where I needed to be and get to what I wanted. I’ve done this before. I’ve had slumps kind of at every level. I’ve always kind of, I went back and said, ‘You’ve done this before. You’ve been down before. You got out of it.’ 

“There’s kind of like a little pattern, so hopefully I don’t do that pattern again.”

3. This was also good from Spaun, in answering a question about seeing his two daughters, Emerson and Violet, after his win:

“My daughter always asks me, every time dad goes golfing, she’s like, ‘Were you the winner today?’ Sometimes I’m like, ‘Yeah, I was.’ She’s like, ‘Where’s my surprise?’ So today she’s like, ‘You’re the winner today.’ Like she got to see it. She didn’t have to ask me. So that was a really fun moment.”

4. Speaking of his daughters, his youngest, Violet, was sick Sunday morning, and at 6 a.m., dad was at a CVS. 

“I was just like, OK, my wife was up at 3 a.m., and she’s like, Violet is vomiting all over. She can’t keep anything down. It was kind of a rough start to the morning. I’m not blaming that on my start, but it kind of fit the mold of what was going on, the chaos. I don’t think I had any — I didn’t really — like when I go back home after the round, my kids are there, and it’s such a big distraction where I’m not even having to dwell on anything or think too much, which is a good thing. Like the Players was tough. I was alone that week, and I’m just kind of sitting there at night in my hotel room, like trying not to go on social media, trying not to go on Twitter or whatever, X. It’s nice to be able to have the kids to be around and be a dad. That kind of keeps your mind off golf and kind of gets me in a calm, cool, collective mindset going into today.”

5. Monday, the story made the rounds — and CVS tweeted congrats, as you can see below.