After calling out a sexist golfer on Twitter, Charley Hull explained her side of the story — and why she’d beat him in a match.
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There’s an ill-fated hypothetical that pops up every so often in the Golf Twitter world: How would a low single-digit handicap male fare against a field of LPGA pros?
Largely, the general public understands this is an asinine question. LPGA pros are professional athletes, and to think that a single-digit male could hang with them is outrageous. But still, the bluster of a vocal minority persists.
Just this week, Golf Twitter had another encounter with one of these delusional keyboard warriors. Lou Stagner, stats guru and golf coach, posted a DM he received on Twitter by an anonymous user, and John Doe used all the classic talking points.
“I am a 3 handicapper that plays from 6900 yards and I hit my driver 290,” the man said. “I would make every cut on the LPGA and be a top20 plyr [sic].”
Stagner’s post got plenty of engagement, with most roasting the man and his hubris. In fact, his post got so much traction that LPGA pro Charley Hull even got involved.
“Shall we sort this game out,” Hull wrote. “I’ll let him play off the red tees whilst I’ll play off the whites.”
Come to find out, the banter from Hull was a fortunate bit of timing for those that thrive off this sort of content. As the 27-year-old explained in a call with the media on Wednesday, she’s not a habitual user of Twitter and didn’t even know she had an account until recently.
“My agent’s been running it for me for the last five years,” Hull said. “I went to go log onto it to find a message I sent to my cousin a few years ago. When I log on I’ve seen this guy tweet this thing and I replied back because I thought it was quite funny. I was like, ‘The cheek of him.’”
The tweet soon went viral, with many fans and media chiming in to show their support of this potential match. But even if the game did come to fruition, it wouldn’t be much of a fair fight, Hull said.
“They think of us girls being like an average golfer,” Hull said. “We’ve got so much skill and I think they’re quite surprised when they come watch us in real life.”
Hull, who’s won six times worldwide and is gearing up for her sixth Solheim Cup later this month, said she plays lots of matches at home with men’s pros from the European Tour and Challenge Tour, and they play from the same tees. Despite the length advantage, Hull holds her own in their matches and wins her fair share of the time.
“I feel like that guy needs to wake up a bit,” Hull said.
When pressed on what element of the game LPGA pros would have the greatest advantage, Hull had a quick response.
“All around,” she said. “I feel like our short games are a lot tidier and I feel like as a whole of our game, we’re quite tidy. We’ve got good short games, we’ve got good putting. Some amateurs are really good off the tee, but they don’t have good short game. Or they’ll be really good at putting but they can’t get it off the tee. So we’re just more consistent.”
Simply put: you better bring your A-game. But even if you do, it’s not likely to work out well.
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