Champ at 2025 TPC Colorado tourney teeing up U.S. Open run

BERTHOUD — Last July, professional golfer Neal Shipley was hoisting a trophy as the winner of the 2025 Korn Ferry Tour tournament at Berthoud’s TPC Colorado course. Now, less than a year later, he’s preparing to tee off Thursday in the U.S. Open.

“It’s really a special place to be,” Shipley, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania, said Monday of the ultra-long — TPC Colorado features a gargantuan 773-yard, par-5 13th hole — high-altitude championship course that made its debut in 2018 inside Berthoud’s Heron Lakes community. 

“I’m glad I’m not here this year,” Shipley joked of his move from the developmental Korn Ferry Tour to pro golf’s premier circuit, the PGA Tour. “But certainly it’s a special place for a golf course.”

Shipley’s 2025 win in Berthoud — at a tournament then called The Ascendant and now dubbed The Blue Championship — came after a 7-shot final-round comeback and earned the golfer a $180,000 payday. 

Speaking on a video call from Shinnecock Hills, the Long Island, New York course hosting this weekend’s U.S. Open, Shipley said that he will remember TPC Colorado as “the place that I punched my PGA Tour card. Prior to that week, we’d been a little stressed out, I wasn’t playing my best golf. …Getting that win was huge to get over the hump and bring me up (to the PGA Tour) the next year.”

During his championship week at TPC Colorado last July, Shipley, who played in the 2024 U.S. Open as an amateur, said he found the opportunity to indulge in a classic Colorado summer pastime: “I went down to Boulder and went to this beer-garden situation with some friends that lived in Boulder and went to (the University of Colorado),” he said. “I really enjoyed Boulder that one night.” 

Korn Ferry golfer and Colorado native Chris Korte also spoke to reporters Monday during TPC Colorado’s media day in advance of The Blue Championship, which starts July 9. 

“When you think of Colorado, you don’t necessarily think of a great golf destination, so being able to showcase what our state has to offer in the golf world is incredible,” he said. “… Having family and friends be able to come to the golf course and see what I do for a living is definitely going to jack me up a little bit. It’s incredibly exciting to come back to one of my favorite places and play for really high stakes.”

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