Alan Shipnuck (1973) is an American sportswriter, specializing in golf. He is a partner and content creator for the Fire Pit Collective. He was previously a senior writer at Sports Illustrated and Golf Magazine.
Early life
Shipnuck is a native of Salinas, in Central California.[1] His father David Shipnuck was an economics professor at Hartnell College.[1] His late mother Barbara Shipnuck was the first woman elected to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, serving four terms.[1] Shipnuck grew up playing sports and reading about sports; he combined these passions by becoming the editor of his junior high newspaper and the Salinas High yearbook, while spending his summers working as a "cart boy" at Pebble Beach Golf Links.[2] When he was a junior in high school, Shipnuck answered an ad in The Salinas Californian under the headline "Sportswriters Wanted," beginning his career in journalism.[3]
Magazine career
While an undergrad at UCLA, Shipnuck maintained a two-year correspondence with Mark Mulvoy, the managing editor of SI whom he had met on the first tee at Pebble Beach.[3] This led to an internship beginning in January 1994, when Shipnuck took a leave of absence from UCLA to work out of SI's headquarters in New York City[2] on the nascent Golf Plus section, which provided supplemental coverage of the sport to subscribers.[4] Shipnuck earned numerous bylines during his internship, culminating with a cover story on Ken Griffey, Jr. in the August 8, 1994 issue.[2] After returning to UCLA to earn his Communications degree, Shipnuck was hired in April 1996 as the youngest staff writer in Sports Illustrated history.[5]
In April 2018, Shipnuck left SI to join Golf Magazine.[7] In 2021, he won his 12th first-place citation in the annual awards contest conducted by the Golf Writers Association of America, breaking the record held by Dan Jenkins, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.[8] In March 2021, Shipnuck left Golf Magazine to serve as partner and executive editor at a new media company, the Fire Pit Collective.[9]
Books
In 2001, Shipnuck's first book, Bud, Sweat & Tees, was published by Simon & Schuster. It became a national best-seller in 2002 after the protagonist, Rich Beem, won the PGA Championship.[10]
The Battle For Augusta National was published in 2004. It is a revisionist club history of the home of the Masters and chronicles the controversy around its then all-male membership; Publishers Weekly hailed it for "superbly recounting all of the debacle's hilarious, sad, serious and absurd details."[10]
Swinging From My Heels: Confessions of an LPGA Star (2010) is a diary of Christina Kim's triumphs and tribulations on the LPGA Tour.
Shipnuck co-wrote the novel The Swinger with his friend Michael Bamberger. A national best-seller in 2011,[11] it goes inside the world of a cross-cultural golf superstar whose life is torn asunder by scandal; there is some resemblance to the life and times of Tiger Woods.[12]
In 2017, Shipnuck's coffee table book Monterey Peninsula Country Club: A Complete History was published. In 2018, he co-wrote with Harriet Diamond her memoir The Best Is Yet To Come.
PHIL: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf's Most Colorful Superstar was published by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster in May 2022. In February 2022, an excerpt from Phil appeared on FirePitCollective.com, containing Mickelson's provocative statements about Saudi Arabia and the PGA Tour.[13] In the ensuing controversy, three corporate sponsors ended their affiliation with Mickelson[14] and he announced he would be taking time off to "prioritize the ones I love most and work on being the man I want to be."[15]
Personal
Shipnuck is a member of the 2022 class of the Salinas Valley Sports Hall of Fame.[16] He lives in Carmel, California and is the head coach of the girls basketball team at Carmel High School.[2]
