Dave, who had earned £2.50 a five-and-a-half day week while training as a plasterer while expanding his knowledge as a builder, was no different to Charley in his duties at the double. Once qualified, he would work seven days a week renovating one house after another. It wasn’t long before an older friend who was in the same industry said he wanted to get rid of some of his properties. Dave eventually bought a few and signed a contract on the back of a pack of cigarettes.
When Dave’s first partner died, he had bought another property – all three of which were a parsonage, a gamekeeper’s cottage and a barn – on land 200 meters from their daughter Lisa’s primary school. He wanted to do renovation work in the morning and take care of Lisa for the rest of the day.
Within a few years after Basienka gave birth to Charley, the arrangement he had with her was much the same as the one he had with Lisa, except he would pick her up from school and take her to the golf course.
When Charley was picked to play for Great Britain and Ireland in the 2012 Curtis Cup in Nairn at the age of 16, there was some uproar when Tegwen Matthews, the captain, discovered that the teenager knew nothing about foursomes. Matthews felt she had no choice but to leave her out of that format on the first morning and a day later she realized four-ball wasn’t Charley’s thing either. She won her singles when GB&I defeated the Americans 12½-10½.
Had he been consulted, Dave would have provided a perfectly understandable solution: “The last thing Charley wants to do is hit every other ball. And when it comes to four-balls, she wants to play her partner’s shots as well as her own.”
At the beginning of 2013, Charley turned professional and took part in the Ladies European Tour. Later that year, news of what had happened in Nairn was passed on to Liselotte Neumann, captain of the 2013 European Solheim Cup team in Colorado, who had made Charley one of her captains. As a result, Neumann left her out of both foursomes.
After Charley won one of her four-ball matches, Neumann asked who she would like to play in singles.
“All of them,” said an excited Hull before settling on Paula Creamer, who will be one of Angela Stanford’s vice-captains at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands during this year’s Solheim Cup.
Hull defeated Creamer, 5 and 4. With charming naivete she waited until the handshaking was over before asking the American if she would be good enough to sign a ball for a friend at home. Creamer obliged before rushing off to inform family and friends of 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’t taken long for her to giggle every time she thought about it. “I realized this was exactly something I could have done when I was her age!” she said.
It was Charley’s wish that her father would pay attention to her lessons so that he could keep an eye on what she was doing when she went to practice. He did what she wanted, but once he was sure everything was working properly, he disappeared to walk his dog Esme.
This wouldn’t have been the case with many other fathers, but Esme always came first. When asked one summer about going to the AIG Women’s Open and the Solheim Cup, he said the events were too close together to make that happen. It had to be one or the other.
“I can’t leave Esme alone for the next two weeks,” he explained. “She needs her walks.”
After Esme’s death last year, Dave felt miserable. He had told Charley that since he was turning 75 this year, he would not get another dog. Charley didn’t like the sound of it. A few days later she called him. “Daddy,” she said, “I found a puppy you’re going to love.” She was right. Foxy, the German Shepherd they went to, came back with them. She is now 6 months old and Dave couldn’t be happier.
“Children go through phases and you can lose a child if you don’t leave them to it. Golf is golf and that in itself is not enough. A golfer has to have a life at the same time and no one would want to destroy that. Only by switching off can you switch on.”
–Dave Hull
There is rarely a time when Dave isn’t impressed with his daughter.
Still, there was a night in 2016 when she invited friends over for drinks before flying to Florida for the LPGA’s end-of-season CME Group Tour Championship. He wisely advised her to go to bed early, but early the next morning he found her and her friends in the shed at the top of the garden. “They were all blotto!” he laughed.
“I’m fine, Dad,” she assured him before he took her to the airport.
She went away and won the tournament, raising a small sum of $500,000.
“Children go through phases and you can lose a child if you don’t leave them to it,” he said. “Golf is golf and that in itself is not enough. A golfer must have a life at the same time and no one would want to destroy it. Only by switching off can you start again.”
In 2023, Charley was diagnosed with ADHD and left feeling like the condition had turned her into “a 100mph person.” Medication didn’t change a swing speed that was off the charts. When it came to the ’23 AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath, where she and Lilia Vu started the final round with a share of the lead, there was much the same result as at Royal Porthcawl two summers later. Towards the end she ran out of steam.
In Wales, Hull was nine strokes behind Miyu Yamashita midway through the stage before making a flight of birdies and was just three behind the Japanese player going into the final round. Her next move was to score five birdies in her first 15 holes on Sunday, meaning she was just one stroke behind. Only that was when she closed bogey, bogey, par and tied for second with Minami Katsu.
“I had to take a break from golf for a few weeks, and then I learned to relax.”
—Charley Hull
Dave has often seen her go too fast for her own good, and that Sunday at Royal Porthcawl was one such occasion. “It’s just Charley,” he said. “She has never been different.” On the other hand, Adam Woodward, her caddie of many years, felt that the finish in Porthcawl would have been more in line with Harrington’s thoughts on how there are days when the track setups do not allow the Charleys of this world to use their drivers.
As for her ADHD diagnosis, Hull had what she saw as a stroke of luck when she injured her ankle falling off a curb last August at the Centurion Club. “I had to take a break from golf for a few weeks, and then I learned to relax,” she said. For anyone struggling with the condition, she recommends the following. “Breathe in through your nose for six seconds and exhale through your mouth for a few times for six seconds. It definitely helped me slow down.”
#breath #fresh #air