Outside it was hot and the PGA Championship was on TV. Golf was not the preferred sport in the Shipley family, it wasn’t even practiced, but any distraction was welcome to alleviate the penultimate disappointment of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The day before they had lost the first preseason game against the Detroit Lions by 27 to 21. It was August 15, 2004.
Little Neal, who was just three years and eight months old, was embedded in the sofa absorbed with this sport that was played with clubs and which he had never been told about at home. The tournament was won by a big guy, somewhat ungainly, but who played golf as if he had spent his whole life throwing darts in the corner pub. It was Vijay Singh.
Neal saw that giant lift the Wannamaker trophy and jumped on the sofa. He remembered having seen those clubs somewhere in the house. He found them in a corner of the garage, dusty, as if no one had ever used them. He took one out of the bag and started swinging trying to imitate the guy he had seen on TV. It was love at first sight.
He never left it. He was good at it and bought his own clubs. He played in school and was the best. He played in high school and was the best. He got to University and finished second in the US Amateur. Ticket to Augusta. Today he is 23 years old, has signed 76 strokes in the second round of the Masters and has secured the cut with a total of +3.
Vijay has not only been the one who initiated Shipley into the game, he has also become an inspiration, a reference, a role model. This is understood since he knew he would play the Masters, he has made five different trips to Augusta to know the course. On each occasion he played at least one and a half rounds. In total, before this week he had already played 140 holes. Between Monday and Wednesday he has played another 36. “You have to explain to me how you have managed to understand this course in such detail,” confessed this Thursday the caddie of Mike Weir, playing partner.
As soon as he finished his round, after playing more than 18 holes and with the cut in his pocket, Neal went straight to the practice range. To work. What Vijay Singh would have done, whom he met precisely this week, although he simply greeted him and introduced himself, he preferred not to tell him his story so as not to bother him.
That summer of 2004 no one could imagine in Pittsburgh that a NFL championship team was unknowingly being forged, the Steelers would win the Super Bowl the following year. Nor could anyone imagine that on that sofa was sitting a golfer who would make the cut as an amateur in his first Augusta Masters. A different story.
