SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Charley Hull of Britain might not be going viral at the Olympics. There’s no smoking inside the ropes at Le Golf National.
Hull made quite the sensation this year at the U.S. Women’s Open with a social media post of her signing autographs with a cigarette dangling between her lips.
“I do smoke on the course,” Hull said Tuesday. “It’s a habit, but I won’t do it this week. I don’t think you’re allowed.”
The Paris 2024 health and safety guidelines indicate that smoking is not allowed at any venues except in designated areas. That would not include inside the ropes for the 60-player field in the women’s competition that starts Wednesday.
That was greeted by a shrug from Hull, a free-wheeling 28-year-old from England. But there was a small measure of concern. She was asked if not smoking — she says she lights up on the course when she’s feeling stressed — will affect her.
“I think it will,” Hull said. “Because it relaxes me a little bit. But it is what it is.”
Hull is playing in her second Olympics. She finished two shots out of a chance at the bronze medal in the Tokyo Games. Hull played in her first Solheim Cup at age 17. She has five wins on the LPGA and Ladies European tours and has been runner-up three times in the majors.
But that one moment at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania made her more famous than nearly everything she has done on the golf course.
Hull said she was walking to the range, smoking a cigarette, and her hands were full when someone asked her for an autograph.
“I always like signing autographs,” she said at the Women’s Open. “Had a cigarette in my mouth, signed it, and then it’s gone viral.”
She hasn’t checked reaction to that moment because Hull got off Instagram and other social media about four months ago.
Smoking and golf have a history: Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, even Jack Nicklaus until he saw a photo of him smoking in the early 1960s and never smoked again on the course. It’s more rare these days on tour, though a few players — Hull included — still light up.
Just not this week.