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Playing in the 2012 Curtis Cup was a learning experience for Charley Hull. David Cannon, Getty Images<\/p>\nBeing quick off the mark is something that Dave Hull and his partner, Basienka, noticed about their daughter on the day she was born. The midwife had handed her over to Dave and, straightaway, the child had opened her eyes and smiled at him. \u201cThat little girl\u2019s been here before,\u201d said the midwife. \u201cIn all my years of delivering babies, I\u2019ve never seen anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dave, who had earned \u00a32.50 per five-and-a-half day week when he was training as a plasterer and simultaneously adding to his knowledge as a builder, was no different from Charley in doing things at the double. Once qualified, he would work seven days a week renovating one house after another. Before too long, an older friend, who was in the same line of business, said that he wanted to get rid of some of his properties. Dave ended up buying a few and signed a contract on the back of a cigarette packet.<\/p>\n
When Dave\u2019s first partner died, he had bought another property \u2013 it took in all three of a manse, a gamekeeper\u2019s cottage and a barn \u2013 on an area 200 yards from their daughter Lisa\u2019s primary school. He wanted to do renovation work in the morning and look after Lisa for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n
Within a few years of Basienka giving birth to Charley, the arrangement he had with her was much the same as the one he had had with Lisa, only he would pick her up from school and take her to the golf course.<\/p>\n
Playing in the 2012 Curtis Cup was a learning experience for Charley Hull. David Cannon, Getty Images<\/p>\n
When, at the age of 16, Charley was chosen to play for Great Britain and Ireland in the 2012 Curtis Cup at Nairn, there was something of an uproar when Tegwen Matthews, the captain, discovered that the teenager did not know the first thing about foursomes. Matthews felt that she had no choice but to leave her out of that format on the first morning and, one day later, realised that four-balls weren\u2019t Charley\u2019s thing either. She did win her singles as GB&I defeated the Americans, 12\u00bd-10\u00bd.<\/p>\n
Had he been consulted, Dave would have provided a wholly understandable solution: \u201cThe last thing Charley wants is to be hitting every other ball. And when it comes to four-balls, she wants to play her partner\u2019s shots as well as her own.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early 2013, Charley turned pro and joined the Ladies European Tour. Later in the year, news of what had happened at Nairn was duly passed on to Liselotte Neumann, captain of Europe\u2019s 2013 Solheim Cup team in Colorado, who had made Charley one of her captain\u2019s picks. As a result, Neumann left her out of both foursomes.<\/p>\n
After Charley had won one of her four-balls, Neumann asked who she would like to play in the singles.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of them,\u201d said an excited Hull before settling for Paula Creamer, who will be one of Angela Stanford\u2019s vice captains at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands at this year\u2019s Solheim Cup.<\/p>\n
Hull defeated Creamer, 5 and 4. With charming naivete, she waited until the hand-shaking was over before asking the American if she would be good enough to sign a ball for a friend at home. Creamer obliged before hurrying to fill in family and friends with the latest bit of believe-it-or-not Charley news. Four or five years later, over a cup of coffee, Creamer revealed that it hadn\u2019t been too long before she would find herself giggling every time she thought about it. \u201cI realised that it was precisely the kind of thing I might have done when I was her age!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was Charley\u2019s wish that her dad should watch her lessons so that he could keep an eye on what she was doing when she went out to practise. He did what she wanted, but the moment he was sure that everything was working well, he would disappear to walk his dog, Esme.<\/p>\n
This wouldn\u2019t have been the way with many another father, but Esme always came first. One summer, when asked if he would be going to the AIG Women\u2019s Open and the Solheim Cup, he said that the events were too close together for that to work. It had to be one or the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t leave Esme for two weeks,\u201d he explained \u201cShe needs her walks.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Esme\u2019s death last year, Dave felt wretched. He had told Charley that, as he was turning 75 this year, he wasn\u2019t going to get another dog. Charley didn\u2019t like the sound of it. She rang him up a couple of days later. \u201cDad,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve found a puppy you\u2019re going to love.\u201d She was right. Foxy, the German Shepherd they went to see, came back with them. She\u2019s now 6 months old and Dave couldn\u2019t be happier.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids go through stages and you can lose a child if you don\u2019t leave them to it. Golf\u2019s golf and it\u2019s not enough on its own. A golfer has to have a life at the same time and no-one would want to destroy it. It\u2019s only by switching off that you can switch on.\u201d
\u2014 Dave Hull<\/p>\n
There\u2019s seldom a time when Dave isn\u2019t impressed by his daughter.<\/p>\n
Yet there was an evening in 2016 when she invited friends round for drinks before she flew to Florida for the LPGA\u2019s end-of-season CME Group Tour Championship. He wisely recommended that she make it an early night, only to find her and her friends in the shed at the top of the garden early the next morning. \u201cThey were all blotto!\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m all right dad,\u201d she assured him, before he took her to the airport.<\/p>\n
Off she went and won the tournament, picking up a little matter of $500,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids go through stages and you can lose a child if you don\u2019t leave them to it,\u201d he said. \u201cGolf\u2019s golf and it\u2019s not enough on its own. A golfer has to have a life at the same time and no-one would want to destroy it. It\u2019s only by switching off that you can switch on.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Hull-AIG-2023.jpg\")
Charley Hull shared the 54-hole lead at the 2023 AIG Women\u2019s Open before fading and finishing second. Warren Little, Getty Images<\/p>\n
In 2023, Charley was diagnosed with ADHD and left with the feeling that the condition had turned her into \u201ca 100 mph person.\u201d Medication did nothing to change a swing speed which was off the charts. When it came to the \u201923 AIG Women\u2019s Open at Walton Heath, where she and Lilia Vu started the last round in a share of the lead, there was much the same result as there would be at Royal Porthcawl two summers later. She ran out of steam towards the end.<\/p>\n
In Wales, Hull had been nine strokes behind Miyu Yamashita at the halfway stage before making a flight of birdies to be only three to the Japanese player\u2019s rear going into the final round. Her next move was to have five birdies in her first 15 holes on Sunday which meant that she was just one shot behind. Only that was when she closed bogey, bogey, par to end up in a share of second place with Minami Katsu.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to sit out of golf for a few weeks, and that\u2019s when I learned to relax.\u201d
\u2014 Charley Hull<\/p>\n
Dave has often seen her go too quickly for her own good, and that Sunday at Royal Porthcawl was one such occasion. \u201cIt\u2019s just Charley,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s never been any different.\u201d On the other hand, Adam Woodward, her caddie of many years, felt that the Porthcawl finish had been more in line with Harrington\u2019s thoughts on how there are days when course setups do not permit the Charleys of this world to use their drivers.<\/p>\n
As for her ADHD diagnosis, Hull had what she saw as a lucky break when she injured her ankle falling off a curb at the Centurion Club last August. \u201cI had to sit out of golf for a few weeks, and that\u2019s when I learned to relax,\u201d she said. For anyone else who struggles with the condition, she recommends the following. \u201cBreathe in through your nose for six seconds and breathe out through your mouth for six seconds a few times. It\u2019s definitely helped me to slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being quick off the mark is something that Dave Hull and his partner, Basienka, noticed about their daughter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[35678,427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-457277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-charley-hull","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}