Charley Hull at the Kroger Queen City Championship earlier this week.
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In the wake of the U.S. Women’s Open in early June, Charley Hull, who was coming off a top-20 finish at the Lancaster (Pa.) Country Club and also a viral moment including a half-smoked cigarette, was a guest on Dan Le Batard’s popular ESPN Radio show.
Minutes after Hull had called for an interviewLe Batard’s companion, Jon Weiner, who goes by the name “Stugotz,” told Hull, “I want to ask you a serious question. How many cigarettes per round do you smoke…”
Here, Le Batard jumped in, saying, “Stop smoking! I promised him from the beginning that we wouldn’t tire him with cigarettes.”
But Stugotz, a smoker himself, continued.
“-because, Dan, it’s leading to something. I want to give up. She wants to quit. I want to leave with him. I think we’re going to make a deal here.”
Hull told Stugotz she smokes five cigarettes a round, but the exchange revealed much more than just the extent of her habit – namely that the 28-year-old Briton and the team representing her want Hull to be known for much more. that only her addiction to nicotine, and understandably so.
That, of course, is the problem with virality: Once the internet brands you (and we should point out here that Hull’s viral moment started with a GOLF.com Social Post), for better or worse, that bond can be hard to shake. Take the Solheim Cup last week. When a journalist posted a video of Hull cozying up to the rope line and borrowing a fan’s lighter, Golf Twitter gobbled it up; Barstool Sports also got in on the action, publication of an article who called Hull “The People’s Golfer” and described her mid-tournament flare as “the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen”. The darts, the aviator shades, the Hull flare: it all works together. Even at the Paris Olympics, where smoking was banned, Hull’s custom it became a story line. The question on the minds of journalists: How will NO taking its toll on Hull’s game?
But if that’s the bad, here’s the good: the massive curiosity about Hull’s smoking has undoubtedly helped boost her profile (662,000 Instagram followers and counting) and marketability during a season when her game has also be in shape. Although Hull hasn’t won this year, she’s been in the kind of race that suggests a W is inevitable: four top-25 finishes in the top five, three more top-10 finishes and a better week with three wins in Europe at the Solheim Cup that included a 6 and 4 dismantling of world No. 1 Nelly Korda. “I can’t believe she’s not already (a major champion),” sang four-time major winner Laura Davies after the match at Hull. “She is very talented.”
Hull is also a lot of other things, many of which have also bolstered her Q rating. For one, she’s an open book, perhaps much more open than her well-wishers at IMG would like. On Le Batard’s show, she let it slip that she had broken up with her boyfriend a week before the US Open. In one Telegraph interview earlier this year, she revealed she had had lip fillers. “I’ve had half a milli on my lips, but so have a lot of girls my age,” she said.
Years ago, when she was selected as captain to play in the Solheim Cup – she was only 17 then – she said she remembered feeling “disappointed” because she had “a birthday party I had to go to that weekend.” However, at the same Solheim Cup, Hull quickly became a media favorite for her candor. Asked about her steely teammate Suzanne Pettersenwho sat next to Hull at a group press conference, Hull said: “She’s really experienced, but she’s not that old, to be honest. I meant it in a nice way. Next question, please.”
This is Hull, and always has been. Raised in Northamptonshire, England, Hull left school at age 12; her parents, Dave, a plasterer, and mother, Basienka, who was an accomplished tennis player, chose to home-school their daughter, although it is unclear how much schooling she actually received. “I didn’t do any schoolwork when I left school, I just played golf,” Charley said Golf Monthly in 2020, referring to the many hours she logged at Kettering Golf Club. “Usually people were at school from 9 am to 3 pm; I played golf from 9 am to 3 pm every day. I was playing with the boys down at the golf club because they sometimes skipped school to play with me and we only had a few matches. Some of them were much older than me.”
Her first coach was not good at technique, instead encouraging Charley to hit the ball as hard as she could. At age 11, she was playing scratch. Her first major win came at the English Under-13 Girls Championship, followed by several US titles against top American juniors. After winning both the Welsh and English Amateurs in 2011, Hull turned professional at the age of 16. A year later, she was named to the Solheim Cup team, her first of what have now been seven Solheim appearances, in which she has accumulated a cumulative 16.5 points. Only seven players in history – on either side – have accumulated more points.
If Hull drains John Daly vibes, it’s not just because of her taste for tobacco and a tendency to call things as they see them. Like Daly, Hull also agrees to play fast and catch and rip her way around the course. Perhaps no moment epitomized this approach more than a forehand shot in the crucial moments of the US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach last year. Partially obstructed by the tree in the middle of the 18th fairway, Hull discussed her options with her caddy, Adam Woodward, before finally deciding, as she charmingly put it, “Shy kids don’t they take the sweets”. Translation: No risk, no reward. With a log in front of her and branches above her, she blasted a drawing wood that for a moment looked like it might climb up to the green. It didn’t, instead curling into a bunker, but the shot was emblematic of how Hull plays the game and, for that matter, lives her life.
Another topic Hull has been open about: her Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which she was diagnosed with in 2023. Hull has said the condition can make her impatient and “stubborn,” but that Competitive golf is an elixir as it requires intense focus. Daily visits to the gym, where she performs famously grueling workouts, are also helpful. Likewise, she said, is drinking copious amounts of water. Cigarettes are another useful distraction. “Now I know what to do,” she said last year, “so I manage it better.”
After her blistering performance against Korda in Virginia, Hull got right back to work, finding a flight to New York City for some sponsors and media appearances and then to Cincinnati for this week’s LPGA event, the Kroger Queen City Championship. . Solheim had been a long and exhausting week for Hull, as it had been for all the players. Wake up call at half past four in the morning. Boat trips. Press scrums. A continent on your shoulders. “And then the adrenaline from the weekend,” Hull said earlier this week from Kroger. “Obviously, I played all five games, I had a lot of adrenaline and now I feel like I’m in a slump because I’m so tired.” But not just tired. “Absolutely devastated,” Hull said.
However, it is hanging in there. Hull dropped three on Friday, and at four under for the tournament is seven behind Lydia Ko’s lead. This might not be the week she gets her first LPGA win since the fall of 2022, but then again, who knows?
With Hull, it’s always hard to know what’s coming next.
