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The 25-year-old Charley Hull knows exactly how she is going to prepare for the two weeks of links golf which lie ahead. “I’m going to take advice from the 17-year-old Charley,” she declared. The events in question are the Trust Golf Scottish Open at Dumbarnie Links and the AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie, the last of the 2021 majors and the one promising the strongest and most international field of all.
The English player has always found links golf confusing but, back when she was 17, she had her own way of making it work for her. Namely, through introducing a touch of definition to a flat, wide fairway by visualising a row of trees down one flank or the other. As a rule, they would be the handsome pines from Woburn Golf Club, her home course since she was 11.
The “make-believe” approach never worked better than the 2014 Women’s Open at Royal Birkdale, where Hull finished in a share of 12th place. That single good result, as you might suspect, is out of kilter with better results she has garnered in other majors: six top-10 finishes from the trio of the ANA Inspiration, U.S. Women’s Open and KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
Hull struggles to remember anything of Carnoustie when she played it in the 2012 Women’s Amateur Championship. Nor was her recent attempt to play the course on a simulator any more helpful. When she and longtime friend, James, decided to give it a go, Hull began with four birdies. Her partner, in contrast, was 4 over and sufficiently fed up to press whatever buttons it took to spell the end of Carnoustie along with Charley’s bit of fun.
What Hull is going to like about the Carnoustie she will play next week is that the R&A have announced that up to 8,000 spectators will be permitted each day. In other words, 8,000 more than last year at Royal Troon and enough to contribute to the definition she so craves.
If Hull had her way, tournament golf would consist of 12 holes. Why? Because the game takes so long. “I don’t know whether it has got any quicker than it was but, even if it has, it still needs to be a whole lot faster,” she says.
In truth she is baffled by a situation in which rounds on the LPGA Tour can take anything from 5 hours and 20 minutes to 5 hours, 40 minutes. She is unable to pinpoint quite where the culprits waste the most time and eventually hits on “general faffing around.” By way of accentuating the problem, she says that when she plays with a couple of friends at Woburn, they whiz ’round in 3½ hours. “And that,” she says, in what is meant as a helpful addendum as opposed to a mischievous little dig, “is even though my friends are hitting all over the place.”
At this point, Hull felt duty-bound to mention the ISPS Handa World Invitational in Northern Ireland where she leapt up the leaderboard with an eagle at the 16th hole only to close with a double bogey which had her tumbling from the top 10.
The reason it was making her laugh as much as anything else was down to how, the previous evening, France’s Alex Levy had been regaling her with a sorry-if-humorous tale of how a friend of his had taken an eight at the 18th hole to miss the cut.
“So what did I do,” said Hull, “but think back to that conversation as I stood on the 72nd tee before doing pretty much the same myself. Isn’t it ridiculous the tricks the mind can play?”
“We’ll have a couple of cocktails, a good meal, and I’ll be back in bed by 12 o’clock. At 25, I need my sleep.”
charley hull
Hull’s mind was behind her decision to pull out of the recent Olympics. “It was pretty much down to what happened when I was the first player on either the PGA Tour or LPGA Tour to test positive for COVID-19 last year,” she said. Not only did she miss out on the ANA Inspiration but, as the tour moved on, found herself left behind to isolate in her hotel in Palm Springs, California.
Normally, Hull is a great one for coping on her own and, along much the same lines as she can make a golf course work for her, she can kid herself into thinking she is back in the UK. That fortnight, though, was all too much. Not that she complained at the time, believing as she did that officialdom was doing a great job in keeping golf on the go.
What she suspects has made the world of difference to her wellbeing is the number of co-sanctioned LPGA and LET events which are now being held on her side of the Atlantic Ocean. The mere fact of being able to spend more Mondays and Tuesdays at home has been lifting her spirits.
“I’m sure,” she says, “it’s one of the reasons I’m beginning to play better.”
If those twenty-something girls who are still inclined to dismiss golf as “fuddy-duddy” were to see how Hull prepares for her next week on tour, they would have a rude shock to their systems.
Mondays and Tuesdays are the days when she keeps up to speed with her girl-about-town self. Not only does she boast a sister who is a hairdresser, but Jordaish Miller, the friend with whom she shares her house, is in the same profession. The two like to be let loose on Hull’s long blonde locks and, if at a tournament, you hear people suggesting she has put on length, it is more likely to do with her hair extensions than how far she is belting the ball.
Where once she might have gone over the top with her partying, Hull’s current idea of a perfect evening out is to hire a car and take her sisters and herself into London for the evening.
“I used to drink a bit a few years ago but not anymore,” she says. “We’ll have a couple of cocktails, a good meal, and I’ll be back in bed by 12 o’clock. At 25, I need my sleep.”
Top: Charley Hull during the 2021 ISPS Handa World Invitational
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