Rob Oller: Ohio State golfer Neal Shipley dreamed of playing Masters Tournament at Augusta
Every sport has a short list of hallowed grounds. Some still stand in something close to original form. Most have been updated beyond recognition. Many are relegated to memory, now reduced to rubble and, worse, parking lots.
Wrigley Field and Fenway Park remain relatively unspoiled for baseball. The Rose Bowl and Lambeau Field are iconic football stadiums. Cameron Indoor and Phog Allen Fieldhouse reign supreme for college basketball. Madison Square Garden still holds some mystique as a multi-sport facility, despite myriad renovations. The NHL’s contributions are mere shells of former wondrous structures, including Chicago Stadium, the Montreal Forum and Boston Garden.
Tennis has Wimbledon. Soccer’s palaces have become synthetic rebuilds, but Wembley, Azteca and Maracana still send shivers. Auto racing has Indy and Daytona. The ponies have Churchill Downs, Belmont Park and Pimlico. The Olympics have the best venues money can buy.
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Then there is golf, where two courses stand alone. One is the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland, where the game originated. The other is Augusta National, home to the Masters, which tees off Thursday.
I have visited St. Andrews and played Augusta National – not-so-humble brag – and I give Augusta National the nod for its breathtaking beauty, even if the manicured aesthetics can appear overly manipulated.
Given a choice between playing the Old Course, which is public, or privately-operated Augusta National, I would guess most U.S. golfers would choose swatting it through and around the loblolly pines of Georgia to getting rained on in Scotland. The siren song of Amen Corner is too alluring, the beckoning azaleas too powerful to resist. Especially in the north, where April can feel like February, Augusta National offers a needed escape and the Masters represents the unofficial start of golf season.
Neal Shipley
Neal Shipley grew up near Pittsburgh, where the month between March snow and May thaw feels like forever. Beginning in about 2004, Shipley warmed to watching golf on TV, enthralled by Vijay Singh winning five of six PGA Tour events and ending Tiger Woods’ 264-week run as world No. 1. And the highlight of every April was the Masters broadcast.
As the years rolled by, Shipley dreamed of driving down Magnolia Lane to walk the sloped terrain of Augusta National. But his dream did not end there. He wanted to actually play the Masters, not visit as a spellbound spectator – or patron, as the club’s aristocratic membership calls fans.
Shipley is not part of that high-brow hierarchy, but he knows how to talk the talk, especially now that he gets to walk that incredible walk.
“It’s not a super rowdy crowd from what I’ve heard,” Shipley said. “Augusta keeps the patrons in line.”
The 23-year-old Ohio State graduate student is about to find out how true that is. Shipley, who is completing his final spring season for the Buckeyes, is living out his golf fantasy this week by playing in the Masters, the first active OSU player to do so since Chris Wollmann in 1996. Shipley gained entry into golf’s first major championship of the year by finishing runner-up at the U.S. Amateur in August.
“Everyone who grows up playing golf competitively, or at any level, dreams of playing at Augusta or competing in the Masters,” Shipley said. “So certainly this is living out one of my childhood dreams.”
Before January, Shipley had never set foot on the pristine course located in east-central Georgia. That changed after the U.S. Amateur, when the Masters extended an invitation to play four practice rounds in three months leading to the tournament.
“You call in and get on the schedule,” he said, explaining how to get a tee time at one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. “You get to bring one person each trip.”
Shipley immediately realized how many friends he had, but he kept his circle tight. One of the free passes went to his brother, Max, and another to Ohio State assistant coach Jimmy Beck.
“They didn’t get to play, just walk along,” Shipley said.
Poor babies.
Magnolia Lane
Augusta National is an oasis in the middle of a concrete desert, located off Washington Road, where fast food chains and retail shops stretch for miles. Masters invitees pull off Washington onto Magnolia Lane, where the outside world dead ends into Shangri-La.
Or goes around in circles, depending on how well one is able to navigate roundabouts.
“We drove pretty slowly down Magnolia Lane the first time, and we got to the end of the roundabout and realized I don’t know what exit to take, so we did a little 360 around it once or twice until someone came out and pointed us in the right direction,” Shipley said, describing his initial entrance in January.
Of course, just getting onto Magnolia Lane was like entering Fort Knox.
“A security guard comes out and checks IDs at the gate, and there are three big pillars and the guard clicks a button on his belt and the pillars go, ‘voot’ to the ground and disappear,” Shipley said. “It’s the coolest thing ever, like entering the Federal Reserve or something.”
As for the golf course itself, Shipley was not surprised by the drastic elevation changes.
“I was expecting that, because I’d heard so much about it,” he said. “What really surprised me were the green complexes. You hear so much about the slope. In my mind, I was thinking they would be crazy greens, but there is a lot of flat area.”
Shipley has talked to 1987 Masters champion Larry Mize about how to play the course and was hoping to sit down with Jack Nicklaus, owner of six green jackets, to get insight about the greens. The current Buckeye is wearing the former Buckeye's eponymous brand of apparel during tournament rounds. Shipley also was working to get practice rounds with defending Masters champion Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Russell Henley.
As for his chances of making the cut, let’s just say Shipley does not lack confidence. His runner-up finish at the U.S. Am told him he can hang with anyone, if his game is in great shape, which he thinks it is.
“When I’m playing good golf I can beat pretty much anyone out there in the world,” he said. “A lot of it in the professional ranks is timing it up, playing good at the right times. Those guys on the tour aren’t perfect. They don’t always hit great golf shots. There’s no secret sauce. It’s just hard work and grinding it out.”
The last player to win the Masters on his first try was Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. So you’re saying there’s a chance? Hey, it’s golf. Anything can happen.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Masters Tournament: Ohio State golfer Neal Shipley teeing it up at Augusta
