DUBLIN, Ohio (WCMH) — Peter Malnati’s yellow golf ball definitely stands out on the course at Muirfield Village Golf Club at the Memorial Tournament. But he said the story behind it is actually pretty ordinary.

“My 4-year-old likes it, Malnati said. “Last summer, he was 3. We were at the course, and he found a yellow ball and he said, ‘Daddy! Could you play a yellow ball?’ And I hadn’t exactly been killing it with a white one, so I was like, ‘I could!’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I think you should.'”

Malnati made the switch and saw a switch flip in his game. He had two top-11 finishes in the second half of last season. And this year, he has three top-15 finishes, including his second career PGA Tour win.

“I still really like it and it also has great significance for me this week because of Play Yellow,” Malnati said.

The Play Yellow campaign, founded by Jack and Barbara Nicklaus along with the PGA Tour, raises money for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals, which includes Nationwide Children’s Hospital. And it was actually more than 10 years ago on the Korn Ferry Tour with a white golf ball that Malnati first began to Play Yellow.

“It was 2013 here. I met a little girl named Madeline Richardson at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Classic over at the [Ohio State] Scarlet Course. She was the patient ambassador that year,” Malnati said. “She had just beaten a neuroblastoma. She was at the time 7 years old when I met them. Her dad is my closest friend in the world, and I met him at a junior clinic with his daughter in 2013 at a golf tournament.”

Richardson is again fighting cancer. This week, when Malnati tees up his yellow golf ball, and as usual thinks about his son, he’s also thinking about his best friend’s daughter.

“This is her hometown. We stay with her family here. They are our closest friends,” Malnati said. “So the yellow ball still has significance for me even though my son is over it.”