ST ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Last week, England’s Georgia Hall, winner of the 2018 Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes, was here on golfing business. “I just love coming here,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether there’s an event or not. As soon as I’m here, I’m happy.”
On the Tuesday, she was hosting a media gathering in Martin Slumbers’ office at the R&A’s headquarters. And on the Wednesday, she was lapping up memories of the Old Course, where on August 22-25 she will be playing in the 2024 AIG Women’s Open. “If I were to win,” she said, “it would be the only thing to beat my win at Lytham.”
As any golfer likely knows, it was the late Bobby Jones who said, “I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St Andrews and I would still have a rich, full life.” Even though Hall is only 28, there must be moments to have her thinking along much the same lines. Firstly, there was that bittersweet ending to the 2013 Women’s Open when Stacy Lewis won the trophy while Hall and Lydia Ko matched each other as the leading amateurs for the Smyth Salver. Great performance though that was for the two teenagers, Hall was advised she didn’t need to hang around for the prize-giving because Ko had won on a count-back.
That, though, was a mistake and, sad to say, Hall only learned as much when she was on the point of stepping aboard a train at Leuchars railway station. Officials asked if she could make it back to St Andrews in time for the presentation, only by then it was too late. “It would have been such a good experience just to have been there with Lydia and Stacy,” she said.
For an occasion which transcended almost any other in Hall’s short golfing life, there was the Celebration of Champions ahead of the 150th Open at the Old Course in ’22 when she found herself playing four holes in the company of Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Lee Trevino. So nervous was she as she stood on the first tee with the R&A members staring through their bay window and spectators packing the mighty stands that she began to wonder whether McIlroy and Woods were just cardboard cutouts. “I had this urge to touch them to see if they were real,” she said.
Finally, the big moment arrived when she had to hit the ball. She caught it bang out of the middle – and such was her relief that she kept playing at her best for the rest of that exhibition. What with McIlroy making favourable comments about her swing and Woods taken aback by her powerful hitting, it was a day when she could not have learned more about herself and her golfing potential.
Ever since Scotland’s Bob MacIntyre spoke out about the loneliness attached to having his family based in Oban while he plays his golf on the other side of the Atlantic, plenty of others have echoed his views. Hall, for her part, picked out the uneasy moments she spends in an American locker room following a late-in-the-day starting time. “It’s 4 or 5 p.m. in America and, back home, everyone can be on their way to bed or already asleep. If you’ve played badly, you’re just sitting there; you can’t talk to anyone.”
At next week’s U.S. Women’s Open, she will switch from having her good friend Colin Cann on her bag in favour of teaming up with Joe Miller, who used to work with Charley Hull. The idea is that Miller will be around at those moments when it is more important that she should keep her head up as opposed to down.
“We play the game differently. “[I know] we don’t hit the ball as far as the men, but I think a lot of people like to watch us because of it."
Georgia Hall
Even before a question on equality came her way at the Tuesday briefing, Hall was airing her thoughts on the matter. “To me,” she said, “it’s more important to look at how far we’ve come in the last 10 years instead of how far we are behind. Our crowds have tripled, even quadrupled, since I was 15, so I think we need to just keep going on the same path as we’re on now.
“We play the game differently,” she said. “[I know] we don’t hit the ball as far as the men, but I think a lot of people like to watch us because of it. They can relate to what we bring to the game in the way of rhythm and tempo.”
She thinks the television coverage of the LPGA – especially the little of what is seen of it in the U.K. – doesn’t do the women’s tour any favours but, against that, she will tell you that spells on the U.S. tour tell everything about the burgeoning atmosphere at the women’s events. She cited the performance of England’s Lottie Woad in winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, as a result to waken the golfing world, and Nelly Korda’s feat in bagging six of her last seven tournament starts as still more of an eye-opener.
Hall is good friends with Korda and, when the American decided to withdraw from the JM Eagle LA Championship after completing her run of five successive wins, Hall dispatched the following text. “Thanks,” she wrote, “for giving the rest of us a chance!”
When GGP asked Hall whether she thought Korda should do a Michelle Wie or an Annika Sörenstam in teeing up in a men’s event, she was all for it. “Nelly’s a great player, and I think she’d make the cut. I haven’t spoken to her about it, but she hits the ball for miles. I know that if I were her, I’d do it.”
If Hall were to find herself a house in St Andrews, which she would love to do at some point, one can imagine she would make for a perfect R&A member. Last week, however, the only property she was studying was the R&A clubhouse and its handsome new basement facilities.
According to the guide, this below-the-clubhouse project became ever more complex as workers encountered some immovable granite amid tons of bunker-ready sand. Inevitably, it all cost more than anticipated, with a couple of members suggesting it ended up in the region of £14 million (about $17.8 million).
The ceiling in the hallway between the men’s and women’s changing rooms is rather lower than they would have wished, only too much was too good for that to matter overmuch.
In any case, if the R&A has it in mind to cut 15 yards from the leading golfers’ drives with the upcoming ball rollback, they should not have a problem in sticking with members of 6 feet, 2 inches and under.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: The Old Course is shown during the 150th Open in 2022.
TOM SHAW, R&A VIA GETTY IMAGES