Golf can cause emotions to run high and, no matter what level you are, it can cause tempers to boil over. In the case of former college teammates and now PGA Tour players, Scottie Scheffler and Beau Hossler, that was very much nearly a reality...
In January 2024, University of Texas head golf coach, John Fields, appeared on the Subpar podcast and told a story about how the former teammates got into an altercation, claiming "there was almost a fight".
Speaking on the podcast, Fields states: “Beau walks by this golf ball and he looks at it, and for whatever reason he thinks that he’s outdriven Scottie by 15 yards. So, Scottie doesn’t think anything — we walk right past the ball and Beau looks at the golf ball. Scottie hits his shot, we get up to the (other) ball, Beau’s turn now, and he looks down and goes, ‘This is not my ball."
He adds: “You would’ve thought Mount Vesuvius just went off, like we had a volcano 15 yards below us. Scheffler got so mad when he figured out that he’d hit the wrong ball, he ran up to the green, 260 yards on a dead sprint, picked up the ball, ran back, and threw it at Beau’s feet. Beau goes ahead and hits the right shot, and Scottie has lost the hole now.
"He’d just lost a hole, but it’s killing him. And now, they’re jawing against each other on the way up (to the green), and finally on the next hole, on the par-3, I tell Beau, 'We are not going another step further until you apologize to Scottie for that.'"
Both graduated from the University of Texas around the same time, and now, some many years after the incident, both have been asked about the experiences at the Texas Children's Houston Open, with Hossler recounting the story following his first round.
According to Hossler, the story told by Fields "wasn't inflated," with the American stating: "We were playing this mess-around tournament before the regional there. Basically we were both playing a match. I wasn't playing him, I was playing a New Mexico kid and he was playing a New Mexico kid. I don't know if you've ever been to Lubbock, but it's very windy. I hit one on the water on 18, which was the ninth hole. 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 but I just hit.
"Two holes later, number two is kind of this blind par 5, we both hit it down the middle. I walked past the first ball and walked to the second ball, it's 10 yards in front. He hits the ball and then I realized that that was not my ball that I was standing next to. We had different markings, but we both were playing a Titleist with a Longhorn on it. One had a marking and mine didn't. He wasn't happy. I was like, well, listen, you're the one who hit the wrong ball. I understand like it's not a -- but like you hit it, I didn't.
"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 either a very good player or a pretty good player that was very competitive. We wanted to kick each other's a*s all the time. That was obviously a penalty and he wasn't happy about it. 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 I should have checked closer that it was -- that that was actually my ball, but one way or the other it's a good story."
Despite the incident, the pair have remained friends, with Hossler claiming: "He was p***d off and I was p****d off for about two hours and, once we got on the plane home, it was okay. 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."
