‘It was his fault’: Scottie Scheffler’s teammate recalls near-fight

As Scottie Scheffler’s run of dominance continues, his peers have been asked with greater frequency to spill stories of early encounters with the World No. 1. Take one instance from earlier this week when Tony Finau recalled their first time playing together; it was the 2020 FedEx Cup Playoffs, Finau had never really heard of Scheffler and the young Texan birdied No. 18 to shoot 59.

That’s the way most Scottie Stories tend to go. They underscore his low-key excellence. They involve humility and some sort of incredible golfing feat. They serve to support the idea that Scheffler as golfing terminator was destiny, but that his unassuming off-course persona is the real deal, too.

But what if I told you there was a story from his college days that exposed Scheffler’s darker side?

Nah, only kidding.

But on Thursday, following an opening four-under 66 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, Scheffler’s college teammate Beau Hossler recounted a terrific Scottie Story of his own. A few minutes later Scheffler finished off a five-under 65 and was asked about it, too. Together they told a tale from their time at Texas — a time they nearly came to blows.

That’s where one reporter began his questioning. Was that accurate, as their UT coach said on the Subpar podcast, that the two “almost came to blows”? Or was the story inflated?

“No, it wasn’t inflated,” Hossler said with a smile. “He probably deflated it, if anything.”

The Texas team was in Lubbock playing what Hossler called a “mess-around” tournament before regionals. He was a junior; Scheffler was a freshman. They were in the same foursome, each squaring off against an opponent from the University of New Mexico. And it was windy.

“I don’t know if you’ve been to Lubbock, but it’s very, very, very windy,” Hossler said. They teed off on the back nine. On No. 18, Hossler hit one in the water. As he took a drop, he selected a Titleist with a different number.

“It was so windy you couldn’t hear each other from however far apart, so I didn’t even, like, announce what ball I was playing. I just hit,” he said. “Two holes later, No. 2 is this blind par-5, I think. We both hit it down the middle and whatever. I walked past the first ball, I walked to the second ball, it’s 10 yards in front. He hits the ball in the back and then I realize that that was not my ball that I was standing next to. We had different markings, but we both were playing a Titleist whatever, 3 with a Longhorn on it. One had a marking and mine didn’t.”

Scheffler confirmed this account. “Yeah, because at the time we both played Titleist balls and I had been playing the same number the whole day and he had a different number and switched it, unknown to me,” he said with a grin. “Just one of those deals. When you’re around each other that much, stuff like that, mistakes happen. But yeah, pretty funny.”

That’s easy for him to say now. It wasn’t particularly funny at the time.

Here we’ll let Fields jump in with his account from that original interview:

“[Hossler] looks down and goes, ‘This is not my ball.’ You would have thought Mount Vesuvius just went off, like we had a volcano 15 yards below us,” Fields said on Subpar. “Scheffler got so mad when he figured out that he hit the wrong ball, he ran up to the green 260 yards on a dead sprint, picked up the ball, ran back, threw it at Beau’s feet,” Fields said. “Beau goes ahead and hits the right shot. Scottie has lost the hole now. He just lost a hole, but it’s killing him. So now they are jawing against each other on the way up, and finally on the next hole, on the par-3, I told Beau, ‘We are not going another step further until you apologize to Scottie for that.’”

Hossler didn’t love that.

“He wasn’t happy,” Hossler said Thursday, looking back. “I was like, ‘Well, listen, you’re the one who hit the wrong ball. Like, you hit it, I didn’t.’ And it was a bad deal. It didn’t mean anything, but it was just — we’re really competitive, both of us. That was the really cool part about our golf team at Texas, it was like every player on the team was like either a very good player or a pretty good player that was very competitive. We wanted to kick each other’s ass all the time.”

Presumably Scheffler fell in the “very good player” and “very competitive” categories.

Looking back, Hossler remains unwilling to back down and take the blame.

“That was obviously a penalty and he wasn’t happy about it,” Hossler said. “I don’t blame him for not being happy about it. I still think it was his fault; he’s the only one who hit the wrong ball. I agree that I should have checked closer that it was actually my ball, but one way or another it’s a good story.”

On that point the two seem to agree.

“I’d love to hear Beau’s side because we do like talking about it, but yeah, it’s true,” Scheffler said. “It was just one of those moments where we had been around each other for so long and you’re in the heat of the moment, you’re out there competing and something happens. Yeah, it’s pretty funny to look back on though, we get a good kick out of it.”

So no, this isn’t a story of Scottie Scheffler’s deep dark past. A reminder of his competitive fire? For sure. A look into the pressure-packed world of collegiate golf? Definitely. A reminder to clearly mark your golf ball in competition? That, too.

“The good part about friends is that it lasted — he was pissed off and I was pissed off for about two hours and once we got on the plane home, it was okay,” Hossler concluded. “Scottie’s one of my really good friends. We’ve grown up literally since we were probably 10 and 9 years old together, he’s only a year behind me. We played a couple years at Texas but we grew up playing the same tournaments and now we’ve been out here on Tour together. I’ve been out here seven years, I imagine for him it’s four or five if I had to guess.

“No, he’s the best. He’s obviously having tremendous success, I’m happy for him. It’s a good story. But no, Coach Fields didn’t exaggerate.”