Charley Hull is fed up with finishing second. The days of taking the positives from going close, especially in one of women’s golf’s five majors, are behind her.
She has five runner-up finishes in majors to her name, including four since 2023 and two in the past year. At 30 years old, she’s playing the best golf of her career, winning two lucrative tournaments in the past 12 months – the Kroger Queen City Championship and the PIF Saudi Ladies Invitational. The latter of those took her to a career-high No 3 in the world rankings, which is the highest any Englishwoman has been in golfing history.
Yet the first major remains stubbornly elusive for Hull and eats away at her.
“I’m frustrated,” she admits during an interview with The Independent ahead of this week’s AIG Women’s Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes. “I feel depressed after [finishing second]. I just want to win one. The day I win a major championship is the day I’ll be able to fully sleep at night properly.
“It is a lot different coming to a major. There’s more of a buzz around the week and especially when it’s at home like this. I think this and the US Open are the two pinnacle events. I kind of buzz off it and I just really want to do well.”
The latest close call was at last month’s US Open, where she battled back from a so-so opening two rounds that left her seven strokes adrift at the halfway mark with a stunning weekend of golf.
A third-round 65, followed by a four-under-par 67 on Sunday equalled the lowest 36-hole total in US Women’s Open history but her final score of seven-under was an agonising one shot worse than Nelly Korda.
It was a fourth major triumph for Korda and Hull makes no secret of her desire to emulate the 28-year-old American.
“I like watching Nelly because Nelly is the person that I want to be,” she explains. “I don’t really see it as a rivalry at the minute because, no offence, Nelly has got however many majors and I’ve got none.
“I’ve got five second places. Let me get my major in first, and then that’s something we can think about in the future.”
Korda isn’t the only rival that Hull is looking up to, as she also cites talented Thai duo Atthaya “Jeeno” Thitikul and Paphangkorn “Patty” Tavatanakit as sources of inspiration.
“I love playing with Jeeno and I love playing with Patty T,” says Hull. “It was weird because at the US Open, I played the first two rounds with both of them and Patty T’s short game was unbelievable.
“Mine wasn’t so good in the first two rounds. So after I saw how slow and smooth Patty T’s chipping action was, I worked on my chipping on the Friday afternoon and came out at the weekend and chipped really good. You don’t pick up a lot of things from players, so when you see something you like, go for it.”
Hull, who has been open about her mental health struggles over the years and her battle with severe ADHD, is refreshingly candid when asked to give her opinion about various topics in golf.
She has spoken previously about managing the frustration she feels playing links golf, with its “funky” bounces that can feel like they’re unfairly punishing good shots.
She had to employ every last vestige of her patience during last week’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links, where she went viral on social media for carding a nine on a hole where she had a 15-foot putt for birdie, only to see that putt trundle off the green and set into motion a hellish sequence of events.
That she battled back from that, and an eight on another hole, to make the cut and reach the weekend is testament to the guts that underpin her golf, although she isn’t as quick to forgive those organising the tournament.
“Last week there was some terrible pin positions by the rules official that shouldn’t have been there,” Hull says. “But listen, anyone can ‘eff up.
“The way I battled there gives me confidence. It just shows that I’ve got grit. I made an eight and a nine that week and on days where those two holes were playing as birdie holes. If you take away four shots on one of those, five shots on the other, then that’s nine shots and I’m probably in the top 10 then – you know what I mean? So, I’m not really going to let that affect me too much.
“At the end of the day, it’s just golf. People can say ‘oh why is a pro making a nine? Why is a pro making an eight?’ Listen, that’s why we love golf so much because even for the best players, it can still be hard. And we’re not robots.”
Hull is hopeful that Lytham will provide a fairer test this week as she looks to finally end that major drought and has a special memory associated with the place, even though her previous Open appearance at the venue in 2018 ended with a missed cut and fellow Englishwoman Georgia Hall surprisingly taking the title.
“I can’t actually remember too much about the golf course specifically, to be fair, I have a very bad memory lately,” laughs Hull. “All I know is that Georgia played really well that.
“But back in around 2006, I think I was nine or 10 years old, I played in the pro-am here with Morgan Pressel. It’s pretty cool to be back. I think there are some pictures of me in the players’ lounge after the pro-am with Laura Davies, Lorena Ochoa, Annika [Sorenstam], Morgan and Natalie [Gulbis], so it was pretty cool.”
While a major title remains her overriding motivation, Hull also has no qualms in admitting that a much-increased prize pot (the total prize fund for this year’s Open is $10m, with a winner’s share of $1.5m, compared to a pot of $3.25m when the event was last at Lytham in 2018) is also in her thinking.
“In the last few years the majors have really gone up in prize money, and it’s really, really good to see,” adds Hull. “It’s now the Tour’s job, and our job as players, to make it really exciting for everyone, get more people to come and make it a massive event for the sponsors.
“It’s great what they’ve done. It’s nice and it’s good because I love playing for money. I’m not going to lie. That’s why I think I play so well in the majors. Even if I’m quite a lot behind I am like ‘make loads of birdies today, extra dollars for me to get’!”
The dollars may be nice but finally capturing that major trophy is what will really help Hull to sleep at night.
