As you see it is a really easy process, however, the driver
implementation requires to have a database name
postgres://username:password@host/database to be connected, which
means you need to connect to a database first.
It’s not because of the driver implementation, it’s PostgreSQL itself. It’s the same with any other language or driver.
A client needs to be connected to a database in order to do anything, including a CREATE DATABASE. Besides the postgres database, template1 is often used for this purpose too.
Then, since you must connect to the freshly created database to create objects inside it, there’s no way to avoid opening another connection.
In short, what you’re doing can’t be simplified, it’s already optimal.