Charley Hull taught us that shy kids don’t get sweets. So no, she wouldn’t be frightened.
You remember Hull, right? Just last Sunday, she took a sledgehammer to Pebble Beach, via a six-birdie, one-eagle final round at the U.S. Women’s Open that vaulted her into a share of second. But it was perhaps a closing par that will be best remembered, though she had tried for more. Standing just to the left of the famed Cypress tree in the middle of the 18th fairway, her ball underneath an overhanging branch and 263 yards away from the flag, Hull had a choice — a safe punch-out, or a risky, fairway-metal haymaker.
And she had this exchange with her caddie, Adam Woodward.
Said Hull: “Can I keep this low under that tree, though?”
Said Woodward: “Yeah, you can. For sure, you can.”
Said Hull: “Because you know the saying, shy kids don’t get sweets.”
Said Woodward: “Pardon?”
Said Hull: “Shy kids don’t get sweets. If we lay up, because we’re three behind, you might as well go for it.”
And she fired away. Which brings us to five days later.
This week, Hull is playing the Aramco Team Series London event. She started well. With birdies on the par-4 3rd and the par-3 5th at Centurion Golf Club, she was two-under through five. But we’ll let her describe the par-5 6th.
“Yeah, I just lost two balls on a birdieable par-5,” she said in a press conference afterward. “It’s a very birdieable par-5 — you can get on in two — and I hit my tee shot out of bounds and my second shot, which would have been my fourth shot, out of bounds.
“So, yeah.”
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Indeed. Added all together, Hull had made a quintuple-bogey 10. She was three-over through six. But we’ll let her describe holes 7 through 18.
“I was just kind of making birdies,” she said in an interview that she posted to her Instagram stories.
Indeed. After the 10, she birdied the par-4 7th. And the par-5 9th. And the par-4 12th. Now she was back to even. Then she birdied the par-5 13th. And the par-3 14th. And the par-5 15th. And the par-3 17th. And the par-5 18th. She was five-under. In all, she had made 10 birdies.
And she was tied for the lead after a five-under 68.
And no, she wasn’t frightened after a 10.
Because shy kids don’t get sweets, after all.
“It was a crazy round,” Hull said in the interview that she posted to her Instagram story. “I shot five-under with a 10 on my scorecard.
“So I made 10 birdies, and yeah, it was pretty good.”
A look at Charley Hull’s first round at the Aramco Team Series event in London, held at Centurion Golf Club
Hole 1: 479-yard par-5 — Par (even)
Hole 2: 162-yard par-3 — Par (even)
Hole 3: 377-yard par-4 — Birdie (one-under)
