Pittsburgh native and Central Catholic grad Neal Shipley shot a 71 (1-under par) on Thursday in his Masters debut, putting him into a tie for 17th place alongside Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and 13 other golfers in the 89-man field.
Shipley birdied three of his first 13 holes and bogeyed twice in Round 1. He finished top-four in the field with 2.86 strokes gained putting, trailing only Thorbjorn Olesen (-1), Max Homa (-4) and current clubhouse leader Bryson DeChambeau (-7), according to PGA TOUR ShotLink data on DataGolf.com.
Shipley tees off at 8:24 a.m. ET on Friday in Round 2 alongside 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir (+2) and Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune (+6).
Play at the Masters was suspended on Thursday evening due to darkness, with 27 golfers still needing to complete their first 18 holes. Round 1 will resume at 7:45 a.m., while Round 2 will begin at 8 a.m. as originally scheduled.
“I’m really an experienced tournament player, especially at the amateur level,” said Shipley, the first golfer from Western Pennsylvania to reach the U.S. Amateur finals since Arnold Palmer in 1954. “I've had to deal with conditions and hitting all these different shots under pressure. This week is going to be no different. It's just golf.”
The 1-under performance puts Shipley — one of five amateurs and 20 debutants at the 2024 Masters — into a tie with other notable, highly-ranked names such as Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, Cameron Smith, Victor Hovland and last week’s Valero Texas Open winner, Akshay Bhatia. He also finished two shots ahead of defending Masters champion Jon Rahm (+1).
South Africa’s Christo Lamprecht (+2) and Stewart Hagestad are the next closest amateurs to Shipley on the leaderboard. Fellow amateur Nick Dunlap, who defeated Shipley in the 2023 U.S. Amateur Championship last summer, shot a +5 to put him in a tie for 82nd place.
Shipley reached 2-under at one point on Thursday before a late bogey on the 15th hole. He birdied holes 3, 7 and 13 and also bogeyed hole 5.
Shipley is currently listed with odds of 2,500:1 to win the Masters and 18:1 to finish in the top 20 by tournament’s end, via DraftKings Sportsbook. He started the week with 5,000:1 odds to win, tied for the longest on the board. The best performance by an amateur in Masters history was Ken Venturi’s second-place finish in 1956 when he registered a 2-over par, just one stroke behind champion Jack Burke Jr.
Sam Bennett was the top amateur at the 2023 Masters, going 2-under and finishing in a seven-way tie for 16th place.
Top amateur at the 2024 Masters
A Mt. Lebanon native, Shipley finished second at the U.S. Amateur Championship last summer to earn his Masters invitation. Fellow Central Catholic grad Carter Pitcairn is also caddying for Shipley at August National, just as he did during the Amateur Championship. The two attended Central Catholic together, and each played on the school’s golf team.
The 6-foot-3, right-handed golfer leads the Ohio State men’s golf team in scoring average and top-five finishes this season, including his first collegiate victory at the Southwestern Invitational in California. He’s also the first amateur from the area to play in the Masters since Nathan Smith in 2013. Smith appeared in the Masters four times as the U.S. Mid-Amateur champion.
A St. Clair Country Club member, Shipley also received an automatic exemption into the U.S. Open in June at Pinehurst No. 2 following his second-place finish at the Amateur Championship.
Shipley, 23, graduated from James Madison University in Virginia after only three years with a degree in quantitative finance. He recorded the eighth-lowest scoring average in James Madison history during the 2021-2022 season, leading the team with 103 birdies (also the sixth-most for the school in a single season).
Shipley entered the Masters ranked 37th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings and 50th in the PGA TOUR University ranking. A top 20 or top 10 finish in the PGA TOUR University ranking by season’s end would earn him membership to the PGA TOUR Americas or the Korn Ferry Tour, respectively.
Chris Dell is the founder of BettingPredators.com and a sports betting analyst for ESPN 97.5’s “Late Hits.” He’s also the sports editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can reach him via email cdell@post-gazette.com and @MaddJournalist on X.
First Published: April 12, 2024, 2:17 a.m.
Updated: April 12, 2024, 10:18 a.m.
