The Zone Interactive Golf Magazine (UK) The Zone Issue 26 | Page 33

GOLF NEWS

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YEBROWS were raised when
Lotte Neumann named Charley
Hull as one of her wild-card picks
for the European Solheim Cup team.
She was, after all, just 17 years of age and
wise sages believed that a bad experience
against America’s finest women golfers
might have shattered her confidence for
months, perhaps even for years.
Neumann knew better. Having only
turned professional this year, Hull
finished second in each of her first five
tournaments on the Ladies European
Tour. You don’t do that unless you can
play the game.
And she had already played on the
winning side when the amateur golfers of
Great Britain and Ireland beat the United
States by a point in the Curtis Cup last
year, with Hull winning a crucial singles
match.
She was taken out of the school system at
the age of 13 to be educated at home, but
this was only so that she could devote
the time she needed to develop her golf
game. Indeed she almost missed out
of the Curtis Cup team because the
powers-that-be took exception
to her missing a mandatory
training session because she
was competing in the Kraft
Nabisco Championship
– one of women’s golf ’s
majors. Thankfully,
common sense
prevailed.
Taking all of that into
account, it should
have surprised
nobody that
she was one of
the stars of the

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European team that became the first to
defeat the United States on American
soil. Hull played Paula Creamer in the
final-day singles. Creamer is a proud
American, as well as being one of the
finest women golfers on the planet, but
Hull took her apart, winning 5&4.
And she then stunned Creamer by asking
her to sign her golf ball. “Really?” said
Creamer. “Oh, it’s not for me, it’s for a
friend,” replied Hull.
That she has managed to remain
grounded and thoroughly unspoilt is a
testament to Hull’s parents, as well as to
her. They knew, very early on, that their
daughter possessed a special talent, but
they have worked hard to keep her feet
on the ground and ensure that she has
been instilled with a proper set of values.
“I am just a kid who likes to play golf and
mess about with her friends afterwards,”
she said. “I am enjoying my life. I just
happen to be somebody who plays golf
for a living and I am lucky enough to be
pretty good at it.”
Asked to sum up her Solheim Cup
experience, she said: “People said I
wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure,
but I did. It has been wicked. I am
really happy with what I have achieved.
I am not old enough to drink yet, but
the party afterwards was still pretty
awesome and I got to spray people with
champagne, even if I couldn’t drink it.”
She has already been made an honorary
member of Kettering Golf Club, where
she learnt to play the game, and recalled
her early rounds with her
father, Dave: “I guess I
started going round with
him when I was six years
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