The 17-year-old from Kettering, Ladies European Tour Rookie of the Year, wants to be the best in the world by the time she's 21
"I really wanted to be a spy," Charley Hull says in a deadpan voice after she has ticked off all her other career options had she not become a professional golfer. The 17-year-old, who is the newly announced Rookie of the Year on the Ladies European Tour, has just admitted that, if she had not completed her home education, "I would have probably still left school at 16. My friends are beauticians and hairdressers and stuff like that. My friends who are boys are mostly builders. So I'd have probably gone down the beautician road … even if I would've preferred becoming a spy."
Hull achieved five second-place finishes in her first six tournaments. She was also the star performer in the Solheim Cup, the women's equivalent of the Ryder Cup, and the youngest player to be picked for either Europe or the United States. While some of her American counterparts vomited with nerves, Hull was startlingly assured. It's a shame, I joke, because such steely attributes would have been handy as a double agent.
"How do you know I'm not one?" Hull says, narrowing her eyes.
It would be some cover, having the persona of the most promising young women's golfer on the planet. "Yeah," she says, her poker-face breaking into laughter. "Everyone thinks I'm flying away to some golf tournament but I'm actually on a secret spying mission. I could be doing that anyway. You never know …"
Hull, instead, has been nominated for BT Sport's Action Woman of the Year – alongside more established champions such as Christine Ohuruogu, Ellie Simmonds and Laura Robson. She sits in their cafeteria and, because awards are becoming so familiar, tells me about her imaginary alter ego. "When I was a younger I used to have these obsessions of spying on my sisters. I had these little beeping things and if someone walked past it would beep. I also had a gun – which shot out flying saucers. I shot my sisters a few times. But most of the time I just spied on Nicole and Lisa. I don't think they knew I was doing it – I was that good."
Eight years ago, when she was just nine, Hull won the British Ladies National Championship at Turnberry. Her manager, Joe McQuade, an old family friend, tells me a lovely story about how the lady captain of Kettering Golf Club picked up Hull on the way to the tournament. Hull was still so small she needed a booster seat. Once they reached the course, Hull headed out to compete in a championship for which 24,000 women had tried to qualify. They were down to the best amateurs in Britain but nine-year-old Charley Hull trounced them all – and jumped back on her booster seat for the journey home.
"I remember different things about that tournament," Hull says. "It was really funny because I was so light I actually got blown over by the wind."
Did she appreciate the significance of winning such a prestigious tournament? "You know what?" Hull asks, her eyes widening. "I didn't want to hang around and get the trophy they'd asked David Wilkie, the old Olympic swimmer, to hand over. I wanted to be inside playing on my Nintendo DS. I had this Harry Potter game that I loved."
What prompted Hull to start hitting golf balls at the age of two? "It was probably because my dad played the game. And my next-door neighbour, Ben, also played. We'd toddle around in my garden with these plastic golf clubs and try to hit balls against different branches of a big tree. We were both pretty good."
Ben, presumably, no longer lives next door to Hull's family home in Burton Latimer, near Kettering? "He does – but he doesn't play golf anymore. He went into football. But if he'd carried on he would definitely have become a professional. He was ever so gifted. My dad says he had great hands."
Given Hull won €135,994 on the European Tour this year, Ben is presumably kicking himself for giving up golf? "Probably," Hull shrugs. "I stopped hanging out with him a couple of years ago because we went to different schools. He was a good lad."
There is something reassuringly normal about Hull – and, unlike many prodigies, she held on to her childhood even if she was so skilled at golf that her parents agreed to take her out of school and have her tutored at home from the age of 13. "I always wanted my childhood," she says. "Like now I just want to be an ordinary teenager and have banter with my friends on Facebook – even if a lot of them are older, like 22 or 23. I always get on with mature people but we can still be silly and have fun."
McQuade insists that Hull's mental strength is her most formidable quality. "Charley's totally different between the ears," he says.
Hull likes simple phrases – "All I really do is just hit it, find it and hit it again" and "I'm not going to die if I hit a bad shot, am I?" – which fuse teenage nonchalance with worldly pragmatism. She also suggests that the contrasting story of her Polish grandmother, Irena Pernak, might explain her own apparently fearless character. "Her life was amazing," she says of her mum's mother. "I've not read the book [The Red Beads] written about her but that's where I get my competitiveness from. She had to fight a lot."
Is her grandmother still alive? "Oh, yeah. She's in an old people's home."
"A care home," McQuade corrects her gently from an adjoining table.
"Right," Hull nods. "Joe, how old is Babi? About 87?"
McQuade establishes later that Irena is 91. Hull looks shy as she tries to explain her extraordinary story. "I know Babi was taken by the Russians and put in a prisoner-of-war camp. She met my granddad and they got taken to Siberia and Iran and all them countries – and she escaped. Joe, do you know the details?"
It emerges that Pernak worked for the Polish resistance in the second world war – after her town, Lvov, was invaded by the Germans and then the Russians. At the age of 15, Russian soldiers forced her on to a cattle truck which took her to a labour camp in Siberia. Eventually, Pernak was part of a small group which escaped. They made the long trek across Siberia, scavenging for food, and ended up in Baghdad where she met a Polish solider, Josef, who became her husband. After the war, Polish refugees such as Josef and Pernak were given the choice of starting a new life in America, Argentina or Britain. They decided to start again in England – and found themselves in Kettering.
Hull points out that her golfing battles are almost absurdly insignificant in comparison to her grandmother's struggles. "I should've asked her more about it but you know what you're like when you're young. My mum would try and get me to speak Polish but I wasn't having it."
Does she feel Polish in any way? "I'm so English. But I feel a bit Polish when I speak about my grandmother. Babi's got Parkinson's but I get my fight from her. And I'm fearless on the golf course because I'm just hitting a little white ball. It's not life and death. I played in Dubai the other week. I was in really thick rough. I needed to get it over the water and I didn't think I could do it. But then I thought, 'It's just a game. It's not like I'm going to die if I hit it in the water.' So I hit it, hard, cleared the water, and plonked it on the green. I was like, 'Hmmm, that's good.'"
A similar expression echoed in the minds of the two coaches who have done most to hone her instinctive brilliance. As soon as they saw her play, Kevin Theobald [the pro at Kettering golf club] and Lee Scarbrow [who mentored Ian Poulter] realised that they were witnessing a remarkable talent. "Kevin got me hitting it hard," Hull says. "I was hitting the ball like a girl and he'd say, 'No. Hit it like a man.'" I was about six when he told me that. Lee got my technique really good. He tidied me up and Lee is still my main coach. The first time Lee saw me I was nine. He had me hitting all kinds of shots – flopping it over trees, chipping it round bushes. It was weird. I was just gifted. At my auntie's parties I'd stand on a football. On the other side of the garden there was a basket about where that man in the orange T-shirt is [Hull points to the distant figure of a BT man in the cafeteria]. I'd have the football on one leg and I'd chip the golf ball into the basket."
She produced more party tricks at this year's Solheim Cup – particularly in the singles when Hull crushed America's Paula Creamer, the former world No2 and major winner, 5&4. Hull then promptly asked Creamer to autograph her golf ball. "It was for my mate," she says. "James wanted Paula Creamer's signed ball. He was very happy. I said: 'That's worth a few bob … don't you sell it.'"
Scarbrow claims that Hull, more than Poulter, is the most talented golfer he's coached. But she seems more excited to have won a Rolex watch as Rookie of the Year – and only mildly irked that she could not receive it this month in Dubai. "It was the Omega Ladies tournament so I couldn't get my Rolex then. I'll get it soon. But I haven't really spoiled myself apart from two things. When I played my first tournament in Morocco and finished second I bought myself a Mulberry handbag. That was cool. After the Solheim I bought a second Mulberry handbag. I still love Topshop and Zara – but my fashion sense is getting a bit more expensive because I'm doing really well."
She whips out her phone and starts showing me photographs of her and her older sisters shopping in John Lewis in Milton Keynes. "Mum took the photos so they're pretty bad…"
Hull laughs and I suggest it must be good to put the clubs away for a while. "No," she protests, "I'll never put them away. Me and my mates are going to Majorca for five days – they're good golfers so we'll have five fun rounds. I never stop practising. I'd feel guilty if I did. I like the feeling of accomplishment. If I go shopping in the afternoon it always feels important that I've practised in the morning. Even on Christmas Day I'll hit a few putts in the garden while Dad is making breakfast."
After finishing sixth in the European Order of Merit, Hull looks ready to achieve her ultimate ambition. "I want to be the best golfer in the world. I want to do that by the time I'm 21. Until then it's a learning curve but I'm going to get much better. And you know what? I reckon becoming world No1 will be even better than being a spy."
Hull has been shortlisted for the BT Sport Action Woman Awards. To vote visit btsport.com