As perhaps you’ve heard, the pace of professional golf is often glacial.
That is a challenge for those watching at home, but it is a problem for those participating in the slow crawl. Golf is a famously mental game, and it can grow only nervier when you’re forced to spend 10 minutes or longer on each hole in the company of your thoughts. As such, golfers have gone to great lengths to find alternative solutions for the moments in between the moments that matter, be they conversations about nothing between player and caddie or breathing tricks aimed at slowing the central nervous system.
But as it turns out, one player in the pro golfing ranks has found an unusual solution to golf’s pace of play problem: advanced mathematics.
In an interview posted to the Korn Ferry Tour’s official social media channels, beloved mullet owner and former Masters low-am Neal Shipley talked about his unusual strategy for on-course zen: SAT Math.
“My caddie last year would print up SAT math problems and we would do those on the golf course,” Shipley said. “Then we’d come back to the hotel afterwards and check my work, make sure we did it right.”
Shipley says he’s always had the math bug — he has a degree in quantitative finance to go along with minors in math and economics. Still, there is a certain irony to doing math during his professional career these days: for a long time, the 24-year-old figured math would be the center of his professional life, not a distraction from it.
“At the time, initially, [math] was kind of the game plan,” Shipley said. “[I thought I would be] going into finance and being a stats guy. I always loved golf and I wanted to play professional golf, but, you know, I always had that in my back pocket where I could do finance. [It wasn’t until] once I finished up with James Madison and saw myself playing really good golf, I kind of put that on the back burner.”
How adept is Shipley? Well, we’ll let him answer.
“Ito’s Lemma, that has always been my favorite equation. It’s kind of an equation, more of a proof, I guess.”
Of course, Shipley is hardly the first aspiring professional golfer to earn a proficiency in math. The economics of sub-PGA Tour-level pro golf requires players capable of stretching small sums. The business of professional golf depends upon those who commit to small-percentage improvements. And, of course, the work of scoring low on the golf course involves no shortage of mathematical calculation.
“I think about numbers and probabilities when we’re planning for golf courses, and how we prepare to attack holes,” Shipley said. “Because at the end of the day, when we’re hitting shots out here, it ends up being just a shot distribution, and you got to figure out how to put your target in the most optimal place for that distribution.”
