By Paul, Founding Editor, 20 Handicap
Issue 011 | The New Icon
The short version: golf has spent decades training people to behave a certain way, on tour and off it. That’s starting to crack. On an ordinary Saturday round, that looks like trainers instead of golf shoes and music on the buggy. On tour, the clearest example right now is Charley Hull: tied for the most runner-up finishes at any major since 2015, never won one, and still arguably the most talked-about golfer in the women's game, filmed smoking while signing an autograph before a major even started, pranking her own caddie with a fake lottery ticket, and never once looking sorry about any of it. None of it has cost her a single fan. She’s not breaking golf’s actual rules. She’s breaking the stereotype of how a professional’s supposed to carry herself, and that turns out to matter a lot more than another trophy would.
None of the moments that changed how I think about this happened on TV. They happened with my own mates, on an ordinary Saturday round, over the last couple of years.
We started turning up in trainers instead of golf shoes. Hoodies over polos. Music playing off a speaker on the buggy, loud enough that the group behind us clocked it before they saw us. Nobody asked permission first. The unspoken plan was always the same: keep doing it until someone in a blazer told us to stop, rather than wait around for a rule that might not even exist.
What we never touched is the stuff that matters. We rake the bunkers. We don’t hold up the group behind. We fix our divots. None of that’s up for negotiation, because that’s golf being golf, not golf being uptight. Everything else, the trainers, the hoodies, the speaker, was never really about the rules at all. It was about how much room there was to be yourself and still be welcome out there. Turns out there was more than any of us assumed.
That's the shift I recognise in Charley Hull, more than any highlight reel could show me. Different stakes, a much bigger stage, but the same basic instinct: do what feels like you and see if anyone stops you.
Where does golf’s pro side stand on this?
On the pro side, that gap has stayed narrower for longer. Mostly it’s felt like two extremes: a laddy, look-at-me energy that tries a bit too hard, or a buttoned-up professionalism so careful it reads as closed off. There’s not been much room for someone in between, properly herself, without playing either character.
Charley Hull fills that gap. She’s not breaking golf’s actual rules, she rakes her bunkers same as anyone. What she’s breaking is the stereotype of how a professional is supposed to carry herself: smoking a cigarette while signing autographs, pranking her own caddie with a fake lottery ticket, saying exactly what she thinks in a press conference. Unapologetically professional, not rule-breaking, stereotype-breaking. It’s a harder thing to pull off than either extreme, and it’s exactly why she stands out.
Who is Charley Hull, and why is everyone talking about her?
She’s an English golfer on the LPGA Tour, and by the numbers alone she shouldn’t be the name everyone brings up. She’s never won a major. She’s tied for the most runner-up finishes at any major since 2015, more heartbreak than almost anyone else in the women’s game over that stretch, and the trophy case still doesn’t reflect it. What she has instead is a habit of doing things no other golfer on tour would risk, and getting away with all of it without ever needing to apologise for who she is.
Has any of it cost her a fan?
Not one, as far as anyone can tell. If anything the opposite has happened. When she was filmed smoking while signing an autograph on her way to the range, days before the 2024 U.S. Women's Open even started, it went viral for making her more relatable, not less, and it's the moment most casual fans first heard her name. Two years later, at the 2026 AIG Women’s Open, she handed her caddie, Adam Woodward, a fake lottery ticket and let him believe he’d won £100,000, just for a laugh. Golf has a long history of editing personality out of players who don’t fit its expected mould. Hull is the rare case where the opposite kept happening: the more herself she was, the bigger the following got.
Why did a cigarette and a fake lottery ticket become such a big deal?
Because golf isn’t used to seeing either. The sport’s whole visual language, from the clothing to the walk to the way a player is expected to hold a press conference, is built around control. A player smoking or winding up her own caddie on camera reads as a small act of rebellion inside a sport that rarely allows one… Neither was a stunt built for engagement. Both just happened to be filmed, and both happened to be completely her.
“You’re allowed a good opinion and a bad opinion of me,” Hull has said, in an interview with Yahoo Sports. It’s a fairly plain sentence for a golfer to say out loud, and that’s precisely why it stands out. Most players train themselves out of saying anything that could be read as controversial. She isn’t doing that, and the game hasn’t figured out how to punish her for it, because the fans got there first and decided they didn’t want her punished at all.
Does this change anything for people who aren’t playing on tour?
I don’t think the real shift is happening on tour at all. I think it’s happening with people like my mates, who’ve been pushing this door open on ordinary Saturdays long before I had a golfer to point to as proof. Charley Hull doesn’t create that shift. She’s just the clearest example of it landing somewhere with cameras pointed at it, on a stage where the old rule about behaving a certain way has held on the longest.
The New Icon
If she doesn’t need an old template to be loved, neither do you, whether that means turning up in trainers, putting music on the buggy, or just not performing enthusiasm for small talk on the first tee. Golf’s next icon might not be the player with the most trophies. She might just be proof of something a lot of ordinary rounds already knew.
I’d like to hear where you’ve noticed this happening, on a course near you or anywhere else: someone who stopped waiting for permission and got welcomed in for it instead of frozen out. Drop a comment and tell me who it was.
Previously in Room 19
Issue 007 | The Hidden Room, on golf’s missing communal watch culture
Issue 009 | The Overexposed, on the gap between the golf everyone posts and the golf everyone plays.
Issue 010 | The Format, on the new shape golf’s growth is starting to take.
I started Room 19 because I wanted golf writing that treated the game the way the culture magazines I actually read treat everything else, properly, not as tips, gear reviews and FOMO shots of golf courses. If you want the next one first, subscribe below.
Paul is the founding editor of Room 19, a golf brand telling the untold stories of the game for people who found it through culture, not the clubhouse. He took up golf at 37.
Quick answers
Has Charley Hull ever won a major? No. She’s tied for the most runner-up finishes at any major since 2015, without a major win to date.
What happened with Charley Hull and smoking at a major? She was filmed smoking while signing an autograph on her way to the range, days before the tournament started. The moment went viral and made her more popular with casual fans, not less.
What was the Charley Hull caddie prank? At the 2026 AIG Women’s Open, she handed her caddie, Adam Woodward, a fake lottery ticket and let him briefly believe he’d won £100,000.
Why is Charley Hull so popular despite not winning a major? Fans respond to her personality and honesty rather than her trophy count. She speaks openly in interviews, doesn’t perform for the cameras, and has said publicly: “You’re allowed a good opinion and a bad opinion of me.”