But Hull is perhaps best known for one particular photo, in which a cigarette dangled from her lips at the 2024 U.S. Women\u2019s Open. The internet dubbed her the \u201cfemale John Daly.\u201d But Daly never wore Louis Vuitton sunglasses or had six-pack abs. For better or for worse, this is how people view Hull \u2014 they draw assumptions from that image and its iterations. Her mother had the photograph framed. It\u2019s displayed prominently on a mantle in Hull\u2019s trophy room.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think I\u2019m a party girl. Maybe it\u2019s because I dress nice off the golf course. I\u2019ve got blonde hair. I\u2019m outspoken,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m just true to myself. I just say it the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spend a day with Hull, and you\u2019re going to see all the sides of her, because she can only be herself. She\u2019s restless. You can sense it as she buzzes around the town. She speaks in idioms and metaphors, but doesn\u2019t sugarcoat the truth. She is right there in front of you.<\/p>\n
But she is not the Charley in that picture.<\/p>\n
A church built in 1147 sits adjacent to Hull\u2019s home. The slender grey spire towers over the neighboring buildings and comes into view as you make your way down Hull\u2019s street. Burton Latimer\u2019s roots date to the 12th century, but the arrival of the railway and the shoe factories in the early 1900s brought new life, including those looking for work. There are two primary schools, but no secondary schools. Weetabix was first produced in Burton\u2019s rolling hills.<\/p>\n
At 23 \u2014 \u201cyoung and naive,\u201d she admits now \u2014 Hull got married in this church.<\/p>\n
That day, when Hull walked across the street in her wedding dress, a priest snapped a Polaroid picture of Hull and her husband, as he did for every couple set to be married. Hull never got to see the photograph, because it failed to develop. She was left with a blank print.<\/p>\n
She has never publicly acknowledged the reason for the fate of her four-month marriage to a man 14 years older than her, MMA fighter John \u201cOzzie\u201d Smith. They dated for a year and a half before marrying in September 2019.<\/p>\n
In Hull\u2019s version of events, her ex-husband became increasingly controlling and manipulative in their relationship. Hull\u2019s ability to discern her own reality shifted. She asked herself, \u2018Is this normal?\u2019 It worsened as the relationship progressed and Hull\u2019s success continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could go back and say, I wish it never happened, but I actually feel like I\u2019m glad it happened because it makes me the person I am today,\u201d Hull says, crossing the two-way street.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got two choices in life, bad things can make you weak, or they can make you stronger. And you definitely want to be stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith could not be reached through fighting promotions he has participated in, and he did not respond to messages left on social media platforms.<\/p>\n
![\"Charley](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2235422675-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Charley Hull generates significant distance off the tee with a swing that is powerful and efficient. (Dylan Buell \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The fallout from the relationship was as traumatic as the duration of their time together. Hull wanted the divorce to be quick and painless, to move on as fast as possible. The year before she got married, Hull finished in the top 10 at three of the five majors. The following season, she won a Ladies European Tour event in Abu Dhabi and nearly $1 million in earnings on the LPGA Tour. Later that summer, she went undefeated in the Solheim Cup, leading the Europeans to beat the Americans. She was a mainstay in the top 25 in the world, firmly a star in the women\u2019s game. It looked like Hull was living the dream, and she was \u2014 on the course.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy best friend Georgia Hall said to me, \u2018Charley, I don\u2019t know how you can go out there and play unbelievable golf with the amount of s\u2014 you have going on, anyone else would be a mental wreck.\u2019\u201d Hull says. \u201cAnd I was like, it\u2019s just normal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hull picked up golf as a young girl, whacking balls into her dad\u2019s makeshift net in the back garden, and turned her deep affinity for the sport into a multi-million dollar career. Now the game was much more than a livelihood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my escape,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Past the church and further down the street, Dave Hull rests his arms gently on a wooden table at The Olde Victoria pub, exposing a faded tattoo from another life. He\u2019s waiting patiently as his afternoon Guinness is being poured \u2014 and for his daughter, still finishing up a photoshoot back at the house. The key to a proper pint is to let it settle.<\/p>\n
Dave is 74. A builder by trade. A free spirit by existence. He has wispy steel hair. Crooked, rimless glasses. It\u2019s either the asbestos poisoning in his lungs or the 40 cigarettes a day, perhaps both, but Dave\u2019s voice almost vibrates. His words melt together. If Burton Latimer could talk, it would sound like Dave Hull.<\/p>\n
Dave was born into a world that wasn\u2019t sure where to put him. His birth mother had him out of wedlock and didn\u2019t want to care for him. Dave was on his way to Dr. Barnardo\u2019s Homes, an orphanage, when his grandmother, Betty, intervened. She became his guardian. A single mother herself, Betty worked as a teacher, but she also took a job in the shoe factories. She needed two incomes to provide for Dave and her four other children.<\/p>\n
Dave stopped attending school at 14 and began working as a plasterer. He also joined a motorcycle gang: The Rockers. \u201cMost lads that grew up in them days, it was a thing, the Mods and the Rockers,\u201d he said. The Rockers liked their hair long. Their jackets leather. Their bikes loud. The Mods were posh. They wore clean suits. Rode \u201clittle scooters.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sly smile emerges on Dave\u2019s face. The details are hazy, but there were wild parties and there were definitely fights. A hundred Rockers versus a hundred Mods. Arranged in the park. Broken up by the police. Dave Hull was not to be messed with. And everyone knew it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never had nobody to look up to,\u201d he says as his pint arrives. \u201cYou didn\u2019t do what your dad done, or what your mum did. It was just me. I never had any interferences in my way.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Basienka always wanted. Hull\u2019s parents went to the same primary school, but their paths wouldn\u2019t have crossed. Dave was a self-described ruffian, and Basienkia \u2014 \u201cBash,\u201d for short \u2014 kept close to the Polish community. They each lived their 20s, each had a daughter from a previous relationship, and then found themselves in their 30s, still searching.<\/p>\n
Then Bash caught wind of Dave. She began to stand outside her home every Sunday. She\u2019d wash her car in the yard, knowing he\u2019d pass by on the way to visit his grandmother, hoping to get his attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cChrist, she\u2019s got this fascination with cleaning the car,\u201d Dave would tell himself.<\/p>\n
![\"Charley](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-142006700-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Charley Hull, then 16, with her father, Dave, at the 2012 Kraft Nabisco Championship. (David Cannon \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Bash\u2019s mother, Irena Pernak, was a member of a resistance group in Russian-occupied Poland. But at age 15, in 1940, Irena was captured in the middle of the night in her town, Lvov, loaded onto a truck, and forced into a labor camp in Siberia. She escaped, along with six other women, hiding on trains through Soviet Russia, into Kazakhstan, then Tehran, then Baghdad. There, she worked at a service store for Polish soldiers temporarily stationed in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
She wrote it all down in her diary.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the prisons, interrogations and camps, the Arctic winters, dysentery, hunger and lice, there was nothing left for us to fear \u2014 not me, who had come out of all that hardened, like tempered steel,\u201d Pernak wrote. Her journals were eventually published as a book, \u201cThe Red Beads.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Baghdad, Pernak met her husband, Joseph, a Polish military captain. Together, after the war, they moved to England, finding their way to an industrial town in the middle of the country, 75 miles north of London. There, they started a family.<\/p>\n
Pernak was 92 when she died in Burton Latimer. But she was alive in December 1988 to witness her daughter meet her lifelong partner. That\u2019s when Bash finally got her chance to speak to Dave, face-to-face at a bar. That\u2019s when the concentric circles intersected. All the coincidences and all the absurdities of two unconventional lives led to this. Somehow, everything that had to happen to bring Dave and Bash together, happened.<\/p>\n
Then, there was Charley.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for the house tour.<\/p>\n
Dressed in mini shorts and a golf polo, Hull walks around, showcasing her private workout studio situated in the back garden. There\u2019s a custom-built gym, a simulator room, a sauna, a cold plunge \u2014 all Dave\u2019s creation. He drew the blueprints. He laid the foundation. He placed the last brick.<\/p>\n
Passing by a painting hanging on the wall, Hull laughs, unembarrassed, knowing that you\u2019re looking. It\u2019s an AI-generated rendition of her sitting on a throne, gifted to her by one of her many sponsors.<\/p>\n
The conversation moves to Hull\u2019s life playing on the LPGA. She verifies a mind-boggling rumor: Hull is an especially early riser. And sometimes, she even keeps herself synced up with the U.K.\u2019s time zone when traveling to tournaments in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I eat dinner at 5 p.m. and go to bed at 6 p.m. I just like to communicate and speak to people at home. I get homesick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike most LPGA players, Hull has never established a base in Florida or Arizona, despite the perks of easier travel and tax benefits. She won\u2019t play three tournaments in a row. Only two. She refuses to be away from England for that long.<\/p>\n
As a child, Hull was in and out of international competition. She traveled to tournaments in a booster seat. She quit school at 13. Turned pro at 16. There was never a chance to stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love being at home so much. I\u2019ve traveled and I\u2019ve been pro since I was a teenager. Do you know what I mean?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
There was a time when Hull more closely resembled the world\u2019s perception of her. She had a wider circle. They had free rein of her in-home bar. She loved a night out. A four-day bender preceded the 2016 CME Tour Championship. No one knew, because she flew to Florida right after and won $500,000 for her first victory on tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell these stories and my friends on tour are like, \u2018Oh my god, you\u2019ve really done that? I wish I had your life, you\u2019ve got so much going on, my life\u2019s boring.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Trust me, it\u2019s less stressful that way,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
We enter the pub in her house \u2014 it now doubles as a laundry room. That lifestyle isn\u2019t for Hull anymore. She only drinks a few times a year. She\u2019s a product of habits and routines. Practice rounds with her mates. Mornings with her trainer. Afternoons with her sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to have a life outside of golf,\u201d she says. \u201cBut now I\u2019m in the gym. Now I can go for a night out with my friends and not drink.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hull ran a 10K on the treadmill before defeating world No. 1 Nelly Korda in a Sunday singles match at the 2024 Solheim Cup. No one told her not to. \u201cYou just let her be on a certain schedule of her own,\u201d says Mel Reid, a close friend and assistant captain on that team. \u201cMake her feel like she\u2019s in control of what she\u2019s doing, because that\u2019s where she thrives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hull passes by the sauna and settles into a wooden bench, overlooking the garden. A robotic lawnmower hums in the distance. Her plum trees rustle in the late-afternoon breeze. Hull feels at peace outdoors, which helps her slow down. She explains: In 2023, two years after her divorce was finalized, at age 27, Hull was diagnosed with ADHD. She had existed her whole life in a naturally restless state, but it started to escalate. This was different. Bouts of anxiety. Sleepless nights. The chaos of a life as a pro golfer didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say that when you go through a very stressful situation, it almost triggers my ADHD and anxiety more,\u201d Hull says. \u201cBefore, I was never like this. I was twitchy, I was fast. My brain never used to be a demon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctors prescribed an anti-anxiety medication in response. But a few months in, Hull felt herself developing a dependency. That was the end of that. Still searching for an answer, she picked up a vape. When she realized she was vaping too much, she picked up a pack of cigarettes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty old school, like my family are. Ok cool, you\u2019ve been through a bad time? Just move on, deal with it, deal with it, deal with it,\u201d Hull says.<\/p>\n
Hull hasn\u2019t smoked in months. Now it\u2019s nicotine pouches. And a career-high world ranking. She\u2019s made it \u2014 a trio of wins, high-profile sponsorships, even a cameo in \u201cHappy Gilmore 2.\u201d This week, she\u2019s playing in golf\u2019s annual mixed gender event, the Grant Thornton Invitational, alongside PGA Tour rookie Michael Brennan.<\/p>\n
Hull\u2019s status is rising and her LPGA earnings total $11 million, but she\u2019s still after her first major championship. She has four runner-up finishes in them, including August\u2019s AIG Women\u2019s Open. That\u2019ll be the next chase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to win majors,\u201d Hull says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think about it too much. I\u2019ll just keep practicing and nip away at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Burton Latimer tour is wrapping up, and so is the day. Hull is back in her living room, reaching for her phone to catch up on notifications. Her social battery is running out, naturally, after six hours of being \u201con.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hull has all the moldings of a highly skilled athlete, but she is also human. And she is slowly figuring out how her gears work. At 29, she\u2019s spent her whole life honing her craft. Always moving on to the next thing. Carrying on. Persisting. Coping. That\u2019s Hull\u2019s nature. It\u2019s woven into her DNA.<\/p>\n
So that viral photograph hanging in the trophy room? It\u2019s not a portrait of rebellion. It\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n