PORTHCAWL, WALES | It’s not difficult to identify the quality that has seen Charley Hull’s popularity soar in recent years. In conversation, as with her golf, she is refreshingly faff-free. Her thoughts, like her shots, are delivered at a cheerfully rat-a-tat pace.
Take the way the 29-year-old Englishwoman describes her livelihood and passion. “All I do is whack a ball around a field,” she said with a grin and a what’s-all-the-fuss-about shrug at last week’s media day for the 2025 AIG Women’s Open that takes place July 31-Aug. 3 at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in South Wales.
Minutes later she was pondering her growing number of followers on Instagram. “It’s mad, I’m just being myself,” she said. “I think too many people in life, and especially in the sport industry, think they’ve got to maintain some type of image. But you’ve got to be yourself, otherwise you’ll be miserable pretending to be someone else.”
Speed of play on the LPGA? “It should be a lot quicker. If it was up to me I’d change it completely. I’d reduce the fields to 100 players. The cut would leave 50 and we’d play in two-balls. That’s the way I’d do it.”
And if players continued to crawl around the course? “Shot penalties and if you get caught too often, at a certain point, you’d lose your tour card for the year and go back to Q-School.”
One player, in particular, has tested Hull’s patience to breaking point. “My tee shot was 30 yards ahead of her ball. I stood watching and waiting. And waiting. In the end, I just went, boom, hit it straight, up to the green, finished it off, walked to the next tee box, waited for her. Too slow for me!”
It’s not just modern pace of play that baffles her. She’s not that keen on modern technology either and pines for the days of Severiano Ballesteros, whose short-game masterclass DVDs she grew up watching with her father, Dave.
“Golf was way more interesting back then,” she said. “It was all about how to create all the shots – and with blades, too.”
Does she play blades? “Yes.”
How many players on the LPGA play blades? “Not many.”
Would she have won more tournaments if everyone had to play them? “I reckon so, 100 percent. I even hate big-headed drivers. I like old-school small heads. I think if this was the ’80s or ’90s, I would have been really good!”
Her game is old-fashioned, too. One of her three runner-up finishes in the majors came at Pebble Beach in the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open when her final-round 66 was an exhibition of vintage ball-striking.
“That’s what I love,” she enthused. “Golf courses where you draw some, fade some, hit it high, hit it low. That round was great fun.”
She was also second in the same year’s AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath, which begs the obvious question: Can she break the ceiling to join her good friend and compatriot Georgia Hall (the 2018 AIG Women’s Open champion) as a major winner?
“One-hundred percent I can get it done and dusted. I’ve just got to pull my head out of my ass and do it.”
Given that fondness for shot-shaping it is perhaps strange that she has never quite thrived on the linksland, of which Royal Porthcawl is a particularly fine example.
“I do enjoy links golf,” she insisted. “But I like playing it with my friends when you can laugh at everyone hitting bad shots because I’m usually the one hitting the bad shots. In competition I find it quite hard because tree-lined holes are a tighter fit for my eye and the weather, and the draw, can be so influential.”
She is, however, grateful that the AIG Women’s Open now boasts upgraded facilities for both spectators and players. Perhaps, it has been suggested, the championship’s setup is now on a par with the American majors. “I actually think it’s better,” she said.
The improvement goes down well with someone who avoids a long-winded schedule. “I’m such a home person. I’ve been travelling since I was 12 years old and it takes a toll on you. I just do two weeks on, two weeks off. I probably only play 21 events a year. Some girls play 36. That’s no life and I’ve got a life outside of golf.”
She is keen to keep it private, however, for all the Instagram success. There’s little doubt that Hull and Hall would be significantly bigger stars on home soil if they were tennis players. But having seen what Emma Raducanu has to deal with – relentless pressure, stalkers and the like – they want none of it.
“Exactly, I don’t want the crazy stuff,” Hull said. “I’m happy how it is.”
E-MAIL MATT
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Ryan Hiscott, R&A via Getty Images