You think you’ve heard all of the stories about mild-mannered, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler? There’s a good chance you haven’t heard this one, which Scheffler’s former college coach, John Fields, recently told on GOLF’s Subpar Podcast.
In a nutshell, it’s a story about two star college golfers, both with a strong competitive fire and insatiable appetite for winning. Now, some years later, it’s a story Beau Hossler and Scheffler can laugh about. That’s how Subpar co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz found out about it in the first place. Knost recently told Hossler he was going to have Fields, the long-time University of Texas men’s golf coach, on the podcast. He asked if there were any good stories he should ask Fields about.
“Just ask him about the time me and Scottie almost got in a fight at Texas Tech,” Hossler said.
He did.
Fields called it an “almost fight” and explained how both golfers were such fiery competitors. He prefaced the story with this: “For Scottie Scheffler, there is nothing worse on this planet for him than to lose to anybody in anything,” Fields said.
It all started with Texas teammates Scheffler and Hossler playing in the same group during a match against Texas Tech.
“They both hit their shots on a par-5 off the tee, and I’m walking with Beau,” Fields said. “I’m really not walking with Scottie. I’m kind of paying attention to Beau like a caddie. He 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 walked right past the ball, Beau looks at the golf ball, [keeps walking] and Scottie hits his shot. We get up to the ball, Beau’s turn now. He 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.”
Scheffler, as you might have figured out by now, had hit Hossler’s ball. And he was furious.
“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.’”
Which Hossler didn’t care to hear at that time either.
“What do I got to apologize to him for? He’s the one that hit the wrong ball!” Fields recalled Hossler saying. “And I’m like, ‘Because of the way you walked up to that ball and recognized that it wasn’t your ball, but it was. You made a mistake, and it caused him to make a mistake. Say you are sorry.’”
So, Hossler said he was sorry. The players moved on, and the story was over.
“But I tell you what, those are two warriors,” Fields said. “You want to have those guys playing for you.”
You can listen to the entire interview with Fields here, or you can watch the YouTube video here or below.
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