Justin Thomas thinks it’s ‘weird’ that Scottie Scheffler plays with high-numbered golf balls

Scheffler is doing some weird and wild stuff on the golf course these days.

Scottie Scheffler is doing some weird and wild stuff on the golf course these days.

During the third round of the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina on Saturday, he hit 15 of 18 greens in regulation and shot 8-under 63. Over the last three seasons, he has the most bogey-free rounds, most rounds with 7-plus birdies-or-better and most rounds hitting 15-plus greens in regulation.

That’s just a sampling of his mind-boggling brilliance, which includes victory at the Masters last week, two more wins and a T-2 in his last four starts. Scheffler may be headed for another W on Sunday. But to hear Justin Thomas tell it, the weirdest part of Scheffler’s heater may be that he’s doing it using high-numbered golf balls.

“Does anyone else think it’s weird that Scottie uses high numbers? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an elite player use high golf balls,” Thomas, who joined the CBS broadcast after Saturday’s third round, asked.

CBS’s Amanda Balionis cut in to say: “Dottie, you have someone else in your lane for this.”

“It’s true,” Pepper, a 17-time winner on the LPGA Tour, said. “He used a seven (Friday) and a six (Saturday).”

“It’s wild,” Thomas said. “I’ve been going about this wrong my whole life.”

CBS’s Trevor Immelman asked Thomas what number he uses. “Anything but fours,” said Thomas.

Why no fours? “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “You know golfers, we’re just ridiculously superstitious. I think I had a couple bad holes or rounds and that was all she wrote.”

According to a Golf Digest story, Scheffler started using balls marked with Nos. 5-8 “because it’s easier to identify,” he said. “I’ve just hit the wrong ball a few too many times.” Scheffler recently recounted to Golfweek’s Cameron Jourdan about one of those times he played Beau Hossler’s ball in college.

Count Ben Crenshaw among the pros who wouldn’t play a ball numbered higher than four – that’s the highest score he wanted to make on any hole. Ernie Els was known to change golf balls after a birdie – he believed that a ball only had one birdie in it. But Scheffler seems immune to the number game.

“Not weird at all,” CBS’s Dottie Pepper wrote on X on Sunday. “Just doesn’t seem to have the superstitions many athletes/golfers have. Scottie’s golf balls – regardless of the numbers – are finding the (the) hole faster than anyone else’s!”

Indeed, they are.

Early in Sunday’s round, Scheffler stretched his lead to three with an eagle chip-in on the second hole.

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