CONWY, NORTH WALES | “I can’t tell you how stressed I get,†chuckled Oshi Fuller as she talked about watching her daughter, Annabell, partner Hannah Darling in the first day’s Curtis Cup fourballs at Conwy Golf Club. “When Annabell was away playing in the recent European Team Championship, I was checking her progress on the phone. It was faintly ridiculous on my part, though I was sufficiently worn out to get a good night’s sleep at the end of it.â€
Everything, however, is so much more relaxed when Oshi, a Hungarian who played tennis to a high level, attends a tournament. So much so that when her world No 27 daughter qualified at the sixth extra hole to make it to the recent AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie, Annabell asked her mother if she would caddie for her at Carnoustie.
Recognising as she did that Fuller had been playing competitively on a non-stop basis and needed to be able to relax a bit, Oshi agreed. “Annabell told me that I would manage it okay and I did. You aren’t allowed to take a trolley in an event like that but it was fine.â€
When Annabell was a little girl of 6, Oshi would caddie for her on the Florida kids’ circuit while her husband, Ashley, did the same for their older daughter, Samantha.
Oshi Fuller warned that recounting the following story was going to make her a bit emotional and it did. She said that before the two of them had set off from Carnoustie’s first tee, she had remembered what she used to say to her daughter on the first tee all those years ago: “Smile at the ball and the ball will smile back.â€
“I said it and Annabel promptly gave me the biggest hug,†she said. “After that, we had four days of fun and plenty of laughter.†(Annabel made the cut and finished joint 61st.)
Oshi has always thought golf has to be fun for a child if the child is to stay enjoying the sport. “When she was 12, she told me she’d had enough of golf, and that was fine by me,†Oshi said. “She stopped playing but, when we went out to Florida that winter, she wanted to start again. She played well, and she’s stayed playing ever since. Mind you, I’ve kept reminding her that she has to enjoy what she’s doing and look at everything in a positive way. I’ve also told her to make the most of the journeys she’s been on with England Golf. She’s lucky to have been to so many wonderful places but it’s not all luck. She’s had to work really hard at it.
“At the same time, she has always kept up with her schoolwork. On the night the 2018 Curtis Cup finished in the States, she flew back to Heathrow overnight and was picked up by her science teacher and taken to school to sit one of her last exams. Annabell being Annabell, she got an A, and is currently doing well at the University of Florida.â€
Samantha Fuller has had a harder time of it and, at the moment, Oshi is worried about the repercussions which followed a six-hour operation involving the removal of a kidney in 2018. “She was just coming back into good golfing form last Christmas, only since then she’s been losing weight and now she has a CPR scan lined up for this coming week,†she said. “What’s so great about her is that she’s always happy for Annabell with her golf. The two of them are so close.â€
When asked if she had any further tips for golfing parents, Oshi said she was a great believer in children playing a variety of sports in childhood rather than concentrating on one thing. “I used to take Samantha and Annabell from swimming to ballet to netball to tap-dancing,†she remembered.
Asked to nominate a single moment which could have set Annabell on track for the career she has had to date, the mother barely hesitated in opting for the fortnight in which she worked as a ball girl at Wimbledon. “She had to train for the job for a year, and it wasn’t just any old training,†she said. “It was tough military training. They started out with goodness knows how many girls and boys and, if any of them were late, or missed a training session, they got dropped.
“It was a bit like having to make a series of cuts at a golf tournament. Annabell would even stand in the garden picking up balls and holding them up as she would have to do at the championship.
“She ended up doing a sterling job across what was one of the best fortnights of her life. I think that the whole experience proved as much of an inspiration as anything she has done since.â€
Lewine Mair
