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OSU’s Neal Shipley talked Masters golf with Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus<\/p>\n
Neal Shipley explains what it was like playing the the Masters with Tiger Woods, and how he became a meme during his few minutes in Butler Cabin<\/p>\n
Former Ohio State golfer Neal Shipley has gained notoriety for his long hair, which has become a staple of his public image.Shipley’s fame grew after finishing as the low amateur at the 2024 Masters, where he played the final round with Tiger Woods.With two Korn Ferry Tour wins this season, Shipley has already secured enough points to earn his PGA Tour card for next year.He is set to compete in the Nationwide Children\u2019s Hospital Championship at the OSU Scarlet Course.<\/p>\n
Neal Shipley\u2019s mullet-esque cut<\/a> is not a case of hair today, gone tomorrow. The flowing mane will remain, whether he likes it or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s called riding your celebrity calling card to the bank.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t cut it now,\u201d said Shipley, the former Ohio State golfer who returns to the OSU Scarlet Course Sept. 18-22 for the Korn Ferry Tour\u2019s Nationwide Children\u2019s Hospital Championship<\/a>. \u201cIt can be annoying. When you\u2019re out here, like in Nebraska and it\u2019s 100 degrees, long hair does not help. But it seems to be a little bit of a staple.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed. Shipley\u2019s golf club sponsor, Ping, made that much clear in November, telling him if he cut his shoulder-length brown locks, the advertisement he was scheduled to appear in would not run.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBefore (Ping) got us to do the commercials, it was, \u2018If Neal shows up with short hair the commercial is done. He\u2019s not in it. He needs to have long hair.\u2019 \u201d Shipley said.<\/p>\n Needless to say, the \u201cdo\u201d didn\u2019t disappear.\u00a0<\/p>\n Neal Shipley’s fame so far not fleeting<\/p>\n It\u2019s not always easy being famous, having to keep your hair long, or for super celebrities wearing disguises into grocery stores and checking into hotels under pseudonyms, but notoriety can be lucrative, and even fun.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a nice watch now. I have nice things,\u201d said Shipley, whose two Korn Ferry wins<\/a> this season helped him amass nearly $540,000, not counting his handful of endorsement deals. \u201cI\u2019m certainly anything but the common 24-year-old in terms of a lot of things golf has afforded me to do. Not every 24-year-old gets to travel the world as a job and make a really good living doing it. So I feel blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n And also noticed. After every tournament, fans ask for Shipley\u2019s signature, and he gladly accommodates their request.<\/p>\n \u201cKids waiting on the back of 18 green to get my autograph, that\u2019s the stuff I love to do,\u201d he said, recalling how thrilled he was to meet PGA Tour players when he attended the U.S. Open near his home in Pittsburgh. “It\u2019s fun to have groups following me during events. We like having big crowds out here, and I\u2019m looking forward to having a big following in Columbus.”<\/p>\n Shipley, who because of his No. 3 position on the Korn Ferry points standings already has earned his PGA Tour card for next year<\/a>, first gained national attention by finishing runner-up at the 2023 U.S. Amateur, where his long hair, hefty body type and \u201ceveryman\u201d persona \u2013 Waffle House has been one of his go-to eateries \u2013 endeared him to the crowds. The second-place finish at the amateur won him an invitation to the 2024 Masters and U.S. Open. He finished low amateur at both events, but it was at the Masters where his fame found a solid foothold. Shipley was the only amateur to make the cut, then played the final round with Tiger Woods, carding a 73 to Woods\u2019 77.<\/p>\n \u201cI got lucky with that, playing with Tiger<\/a>, who doesn\u2019t just move the needle. He is the needle,\u201d Shipley said of walking 18 holes with Woods. \u201cI was able to be in the featured group with him, and we were the only ones out there for nine holes that were on TV. It was a cool opportunity that I was able to capitalize on \u2026 with three to five opportunities I\u2019ve gotten over the last year and half.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Shipley\u2019s good fortune kept coming after finishing his final round with Woods. He became a social media meme when his eyes kept darting to the side during the post-tournament ceremony in Butler Cabin.<\/p>\n Just like that, a star was born, one that began shooting across the sky, or at least the airwaves, when Shipley appeared on the third season<\/a> of the Netflix golf documentary \u201cFull Swing,\u201d which debuted in April.<\/p>\n The day after its release, Shipley was playing a Korn Ferry tournament in Argentina when a man outside the hospitality tent yelled at him, “You\u2019re the Netflix guy.”<\/p>\n \u201cI guess that\u2019s me now,\u201d Shipley said, smiling.\u00a0<\/p>\n Golf fans may know him as the Netflix guy, but on the Korn Ferry Tour he\u2019s just another rookie trying to make a living while learning the ins and outs of life as a professional.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shipley narrowly missed earning his PGA Tour card during qualifying school in December, but now that he secured his card for 2026 he can look back and say that spending a year on the Korn Ferry Tour allowed him to adjust to a more serious side of golf.<\/p>\n Shipley, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, has learned that veteran pros are less interested in where he stands with his hair than where he stands when they\u2019re teeing off.<\/p>\n \u201cProfessional golfers are maybe a little, I wouldn\u2019t say softer, but there are certain things that bother them,\u201d Shipley said, explaining that learning the do\u2019s and don\u2019ts of protocol took time.<\/p>\n Golf pros can be picky about where you plant your feet<\/p>\n \u201cLike where you stand, and making noise,\u201d he said. \u201cCollege kids don\u2019t care, but when you\u2019re playing with a veteran who has been around for 20 years on the PGA Tour, and you\u2019re standing in the wrong spot or rustling through your bag, that ticks them off. So it\u2019s been good to learn the ropes out there for a year and get my feet wet.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Samson, Shipley\u2019s long hair is not the strength of his power game. (He last had it slightly shortened about three months ago). He ranks fourth on tour in total driving, and tee shots remain his main asset and security blanket. His approach shots from 150 yards and in are more on target than ever, and his putting is much improved.<\/p>\n \u201cAsk coach Mo (Ohio State golf coach Jay Moseley), if he needed someone to two-putt from 60 feet to save his life, I probably was not the one he would have picked,\u201d Shipley said. \u201cBut my speed putting is much improved, and I have fewer bogeys from doing dumb stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Shipley is among the favorites to win this week at Scarlet, where he has a definite homefield advantage.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the second of two (Korn Ferry finals events) for us, and the end of a really long season,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe guys will be a little low on energy, and a lot of guys could be super stressed out trying to learn the golf course. I\u2019ve seen Scarlet in all types of conditions and know how some of the teeshots react. I\u2019ve seen it all out here and know where the jail (trouble) is.\u201d<\/p>\n What he doesn\u2019t know is the location of the nearest barbershop.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy hairdresser at home might kill me if I start getting my hair cut at Great Clips,\u201d he said. \u201cMy girl in Pittsburgh is the only one to touch it.\u201d<\/p>\n And she knows the three words that matter: Just a trim.<\/p>\n Sports columnist Rob Oller can be reached at roller@dispatch.com and on X.com at @rollerCD<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read his columns from the Buckeyes’<\/a>\u00a0national championship season in “Scarlet Reign,” a hardcover coffee-table collector’s book from The Dispatch. Details at OhioState.Champs.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OSU’s Neal Shipley talked Masters golf with Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus Neal Shipley explains what it was like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[15994,2967,13716,182,228,1979,15998,17027,50861,15907,236,13721,24895,6381,13710,88,14805,15911,96967,399,664,427,7828,12491,10719,15995,96966,45269,3729,13723,15903,49552,49553,38885,96968,3,24896,6454,1776,35955,13470,13471,15902,5573,96965,99,2415,13109,13546,13717,8462,6072,37480,6897,12853,2099,13692,37481],"class_list":["post-159044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-15994","tag-2967","tag-affiliate","tag-ai","tag-arts","tag-big","tag-big-10-hub","tag-big-ten-conference-football","tag-buckeyes","tag-care","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","tag-columbus","tag-conference","tag-enabled","tag-entertainment","tag-exclude","tag-exclude-from-paywall-logic-testing","tag-ferry","tag-football","tag-from","tag-golf","tag-hair","tag-hair-care","tag-highlights","tag-hub","tag-korn","tag-korn-ferry-tour","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-logic","tag-masters","tag-masters-tournament-2025","tag-neal","tag-neal-shipley","tag-news","tag-oh","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes-football","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-paywall","tag-positive","tag-shipley","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-state","tag-story","tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","tag-ten","tag-testing","tag-tiger","tag-tiger-woods","tag-tour","tag-tournament","tag-u0026","tag-woods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}