I find this very interesting because I experienced something similar a couple of days ago on the verge of clash start although it wasn't exactly the same as the OP's.
I lost three balls in one single round, four in total playing two rounds during the day.
Now, I'm not saying I'm a perfect player who never misses anything. I do lose balls every once in a while in the results of some dumba$$ mistakes such as wrong club selection, miscalculation, horrible mis-dings, etc, but this time it was different.
For every single tiny, slight mis-ding, I had to pay dearly! Even for dinged shots, the ball just refused to stick to the pin. Once again, I don't mean to brag or anything but I believe shooting a 67 (on Wolf Creek!) shows how insanely it was acting up in that particular day.
In brief, we know there's an algorithm built into the game (well, better say... we definitely feel its presence at all times, either favourable or unfavourable although WGT denies activating it), but I reckon maybe it's set to kick in hard and become extremely severe right before or during the clashes at times.
or maybe it's just crazy me and had a reeeaaally bad day.
Either way, please take it as a simple observation from an old timer because you will never see me ranting about a very satisfactory super-low scoring round* since in that case, it's ALL ME SUPER TALENTED! LOL 😁
(* I just hope WGT would allow me some more often in major tourneys. 😉)
↓↓ EDIT : Thanks for your input, Yiannis. I've seen some bada$$ VEMs here and there over the years but not as severe as the one this time around! It was BRUTAL! ↓↓