PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Charley Hull plays golf the way you probably do. She doesn’t look at the pin sheet. She doesn’t carry a yardage book. And when her golf wasn’t perfect the first two days at the U.S. Women’s Open, her mentality was probably a bit of what you tell yourself at the golf course, too:
“F—k it.”
The full quote has a bit more context, so we’ll offer it next, but the mentality speaks to Charley Hull in full. She is an attacker. A chaser. She loves Moving Day because it’s “more fun” to be in pursuit.
“I played really decent actually the first two days — tee to green,” she said Saturday afternoon. “Just couldn’t get a putt, so kind of just stuck in there and just went at everything today and just thought, f—k it.
That’s where Hull’s golf diverges from the common person, though, because f—k it to her isn’t just playing aggressively but doubling down on that aggressiveness. Going after every pin at Riviera Country Club and actually probably succeeding in doing so.
She went over the green on 3, threw in darts on 6 and 7, drove it to the edge of the green on 10, tossed her approach to four feet on 14, reached the par-5 17th in two and capped it off with another perfect approach on 18. Seven birdies, one bogey, 65 — the best score of the week. And nothing really close to what she was feeling coming in.
“No, I didn’t [feel good],” she said. “I didn’t at all. I’m glad I’ve had my cousin out here with me because we’ve just been doing things to take my mind off golf.”
Hull is, like most pros, a golf obsessive. She’s headed back to the U.K. after this weekend and will be taking a golf trip with her boyfriend. She’ll sit up at night — “panicky” was her way of describing it — watching videos of her swing on her phone.
“I just study everything thinking I like this feel, I like that feel, why can’t it be like that? Sometimes you’ve just got to cancel all that out and just think nothing.”
Or just think ‘F—k it.’
That’s Hull’s charm. She is one of one. She does things her way. Sometimes it goes up in flames. Sometimes it’s as brilliant as that Saturday 65.
It’s been an up-and-down year for Hull. She won in February and jumped to No. 3 in the world, but has struggled of late, missing multiple cuts in a month for the first time in three years. She arrived in LA not feeling great about her game and has been spending time with her cousin, Jodie, to get away from it a bit.
“She thought it was going to be this amazing place and she had this dream,” Hull said with her cousin standing nearby, on the verge of laughter. “You know like the Barbie movie, where you see people walking around the circles going out in the ocean? And we got down there and I was like, ‘We’re in Malibu.’ She’s like, ‘No we’re not.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah we are.’ She was like ‘My lifelong dream is being crushed!’ She’s devastated. It was absolutely hilarious.”
Hull likes to travel with family and seems to get as much out of family time as any other pro. She’ll rip back home at times — to the Midlands of England, north of London — just to spend time with family between events. This week, it’s sidequests with her cousin that keep her from stressing too much about golf and have her only a few shots back with 18 holes to play. Saturday’s performance earned her an afternoon tee time for Sunday’s final round, which, frankly, allows for a lovely, unhurried evening. The destination has already been decided: Mexican food, in a city with endless options.
