Charley Hull is one of the best golfers on the planet. She can hit shots most people can only dream of pulling off.
And yet, you won’t find the Englishwoman glued to the television watching the game she has spent her life trying to perfect. Don’t mistake that for Hull not being interested in the sport. She’s still fascinated by the game in its intended form. That form rarely exists nowadays, though.
“I think golf back 20, 30 years ago, say 19 — up to like 2000s, it was more of an art,” Hull said on Wednesday at Royal Porthcawl ahead of the 2025 AIG Women’s Open. “The players, even then men, would have to hit draws and fades and stuff it in, where I think now it’s become more of a power game and where it’s become — the technology has advanced so much everyone can just hit it straight and far, and it’s kind of taking the art away from it.
“Whenever I watch golf, I watch golf and all that lot, like who won the British Open in the 1970s and that. I find it way more interesting back then. Like I wouldn’t really watch golf now really.”
The loss of golf’s art is a troubling sign. As technology improves and the focus shifts from creativity to perfecting automaton-like efficiency, golf is becoming more cut-and-paste, more predictable. From its inception, golf has been about rewarding the creative, the player who can see shots others can’t — whose mind can conjure up things most struggle to comprehend. It was meant to be a game for the dreamers, not the robots. Something essential to the game’s existence, a focal point in its creation, is fading away from the pro game.
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A few weeks ago at the Genesis Scottish Open, Rory McIlroy was gifted a persimmon wood in honor of his Masters victory. He blistered a shot and then exclaimed, “could have played in any era.” The next day, my colleague Sean Zak asked him if his game would have translated back to the 70s and 80s, when Hull watched and artistry reigned, and McIlroy took the opportunity to riff on the state of the game.
“I’d like to think of myself more as an artist than a scientist when it comes to the game,” McIlroy said. “But I think in this generation at this point with TrackMan and biomechanics and all the technological advances, I think — again, I think my perception of myself as an artist. But I think with the way the game has went over the last 20 years, we are probably are more scientists than we are artists.”
McIlroy is an artist even as the game’s technological advances nudge him to the other side. Watch him navigate a links course, play a bunker shot or his slinging 7-iron around the trees on No. 15 at Augusta National on the Sunday of his Masters triumph. Earlier that Sunday, McIlroy found himself left of the fairway on No. 7, seemingly blocked out by the trees. Caddie Harry Diamond tried to get McIlroy to punch back into the fairway, but McIlroy insisted he saw an opening in the trees — a small window only the artist can open. He did open it, hoisting a 9-iron through a sliver of a gap, clipping a branch and nearly landing it in the hole.
The technological advancements in golf equipment have led to the “de-skilling” of professional golf. Too many tournaments now are whittled down to driver-wedge contests. The truly elite drivers, those like McIlroy who have perfected the skill and not just benefited from having a frying pan for a driver head, don’t reap the benefits as they should, as technology allows lesser players to stay competitive on a majority of tracks. Longer iron skill is becoming a rarity. McIlroy has it. As do Hull, Nelly Korda, and Scottie Scheffler.
Scheffler’s golf might be described as “robotic,” given how he methodically picks apart courses. But the four-time major champion is every bit the artist, just like the other legends he’s writing his name alongside.
“He’s 99 percent golfing savant,” Scheffler’s coach Randy Smith told GOLF’s Dylan Dethier.
It’s why Scheffler can excel on any course. It’s why he loves Augusta National; it makes him think. It makes his brain see things more than driver-wedge. It’s why he learned to work the ball both ways and can lean on any shot shape when needed.
“I would say, when it comes to playing, I’m definitely more of an artist,” Scheffler said before winning the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. “I like to use the technology we have to continue to get better, but at the end of the day when you’re practicing to go out and play. You’re not practicing when you’re playing, if that makes sense. I have ways that I practice to try to get better, but when it comes to playing the golf tournament, we’re playing the golf tournament. I’m not playing golf swing. I’m not playing games like I do on the TrackMan at home. I’m playing a round of golf trying to shoot the lowest score possible.”
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Golf’s disappearing art hurts the game in the long run. Iconic courses become obsolete and once crucial skills evaporate, leaving only technology and a host of modern golfers trying to optimize everything through numbers and biomechanics. It’s why Hull won’t watch a lot and why McIlroy bangs the roll-back drum, hoping to recalibrate a game that used to be about more than the grip-and-rip-it free-for-all it has become.
But while golf’s elite are right, that art is no longer the primary skill as it was in the day of Seve and Arnie, the best of the best are blessed with a gift that’s going extinct. It’s perhaps what makes them stand out in an era where 97 percent of golfers play the same style.
After his emphatic win at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club, Scheffler, who is almost always matter-of-fact after such wins, peeled the onion back on what makes him tick.
