Despite Walker Cup Snub, U.S. Amateur Runner-Up Neal Shipley Sees Brighter Days Ahead

A strong summer resume wasn't enough to land the Ohio State player on the Walker Cup team, but he has two majors to look forward to in 2024.

Golf is a unique game. The ups and downs can be meteoric and the reason for the unpredicted moves hard to fathom.

Neal Shipley, the runner-up in last week’s U.S. Amateur, is on one of those dazzling rides that almost took him to winning a trophy handled by Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

Though he lost 4 and 3 to Nick Dunlap in the final, Shipley, who started the week 132nd in the World Golf Amateur Rankings, earned a spot in next year’s Masters and the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

But he did not receive an invitation he craved: a spot on the 10-man team for the U.S. Walker Cup, the prestigious biennial amateur event pitting the U.S. against Great Britain and Ireland.

After the final Shipley was met by USGA president Fred Perpall, who gave him the bad news that he wasn’t going to be on the roster but was named first alternate.

“I was disappointed just because I feel like I could help the team and I want the team to win,” Shipley told Sports Illustrated on his first day back to school at Ohio State University. “I know that my amateur ranking isn’t up there with a lot of the guys on the team, but I do feel like I'm playing just as good as any of them.”

There is some proof of that.

In May's NCAA Championships in Arizona, Shipley entered the final round of the individual championship tied for second and one stroke ahead of eventual winner Fred Biondi of Florida.

A disastrous final round 9-over 79 dropped him into a tie for 29th.

The transfer from James Madison University shook it off and used it as a learning experience.

“Kind of didn't look back,” Shipley said. “My ball striking improved a lot over the course of the year and my putting finally came alive.”

He subsequently had some of the best results on the amateur circuit this summer.

Shipley tied for second at The Dogwood Invitational, was solo second at the Sunnehanna Amateur and was beaten in a playoff at the Trans-Mississippi Amateur.

Add in a tie for third at the Pacific Coast Amateur and a T14 at the Southern Amateur Championship along with what he did at Cherry Hills last week, yet he will be in Columbus next week instead of St. Andrews with the Walker Cup team.

“I can understand the reasoning for the players that they chose,” Shipley said. “It's neither here nor there. It's one of those things, it’s a committee picking a team and they might like certain guys more than other guys for whatever reason, and they just have to try to put together a team to win.”

He arrived at Ohio State because James Madison didn’t allow admissions into its MBA program without work experience, and having just graduated from JMU in three years, Shipley had no work experience to speak of. So he utilized the transfer portal to find a new school and use his two remaining years of eligibility.

Ohio State coach Jay Moseley never saw Shipley play golf before he got to campus, signing him nine months before the opening of the season.

He had reviewed his scores and noted he was getting better every year, but numbers only tell so much. What Moseley didn’t know was how committed Shipley was to getting better.

Moseley has had past success with the portal, including Laken Hinton, a transfer from Augusta State, Felix Kvarnstrom and Elis Svard from Sweden and Marco Steyn from Wake Forest.

“I see the opportunities that the portal presents, both for players and for coaches,” Moseley said. “And I think Neal is a great example of a player that was looking for a more optimal opportunity. And for us, it was a great opportunity to get somebody like Neal.

Moseley calls Shipley is a “student of his own game” with a great work ethic.

And while Shipley came out red-hot last fall, he didn’t really get everything out of his game and didn’t shoot the scores and performed as well as he could, mainly due to shooting some big numbers each round.

Shipley was making mistakes around and on the greens, which over the fall and spring he has cleaned up, his confidence growing as his scores have improved.

"I think at nationals, being second after three rounds, I think mentally it helped to maybe just know that I could compete with anybody on top golf courses,” Shipley said. “Got to The Dogwood (Invitational), did it again and just gained that confidence that anytime I teed it up I could compete, and I could play well anywhere, and I think I certainly proved that this year that all over the country I was able to play well.

"I feel like I proved that I'm one of the best golfers in the states for sure.”

Shipley is not alone in getting snubbed by the Walker Cup committee, as Sam Burns won the Jack Nicklaus Award as NCAA Division I Player of the Year and didn’t get the nod in 2017.

John Peterson was also passed over when he had won the Jones Cup and the NCAA Championship and was ranked sixth in the world in the summer of 2011, but not invited to play for the U.S. team.

Shipley knows those names and as he starts another semester is focused on what he can control.

“I think this past year, I was trying to learn a lot,” Shipley said. “This year I'm going to be in the role of being more of a leader, maybe helping some of the younger guys out more or helping them learn and figure out what they need to do to get to that next level.”

And of course, he has Augusta and Pinehurst to look forward to before turning pro after the U.S. Open.