When a temple of Tibetan monks from Thornby had accompanied the blessing they gave their near neighbour, Charley Hull, with “ten years of good luck,” Charley won the recent 2026 PIF Saudi Ladies International at the Riyadh Golf Club. In finishing one shot clear of Casandra Alexander and Akie Iwai, she collected a cool 621,000 Euros.
Who knows if another helping from that ‘ten years of good luck’ will come her way as she plays in the HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa but, even if it does, she’s going to have a tough time of it with Lydia Ko in the field. Ko won Asia’s major last year and, though she has mentioned retirement from time to time, she could not resist returning to a venue where she has made so many friends, young and old.
Over their careers, the two have probably handled as many press conferences as each other. Ko, because she has packed so many titles into her 28 years, and Charley because she loves regaling the media with a litany of unexpected quotes. Only recently, she said that she never knows what’s coming out of her mouth next, a statement which begs the question as to what she said to King Charles and Queen Camilla when she was invited to Buckingham Palace for the banquet they had laid on for President Trump.
Charley, now 29, is the one who feels she on the way up at the moment. All winter, she worked on the strength she in fact needed to lift the handsome curly-worly trophy she collected in Riyadh. At the same time, she learned how to go slow after years of running around at a rate of knots because of ADHD, the hyperactive disorder with which she was diagnosed in ’23.
She was given plenty of slow-down exercises but nothing worked better than when she fell off an elevated stretch of pavement at the Centurian Club last August and had to withdraw from the PIF London championship. Then, she had no option but to relax for a few weeks. When she returned for the end-of-season Kroger Queen City Championship, she promptly picked up her third title on the LPGA tour after Jeeno Thitikal had had her problems on the last green.
The Thai sensation will no doubt be anxious to get her revenge in the next few days.
The more you think about it, the more you suspect that there are any number of players who could win this latest HSBC.
It is worth noting who was tucked away in a share of fifth place in the Hilton Grand Vacation tournament of champions at the start of this season. It was none other than Japan’s Miyu Yamashita who won the AIG Open at Royal Porthcawl on 3rd August last year. At the same time, a glimpse further down the list and there is a stand-out in England’s Lottie Woad who turned professional on her way up to the Scottish Women’s Open championship at Dundonald. To all-round surprise, she leapt from the World No 1 amateur to winning professional..
Justin Rose, who missed 21 cuts when he turned professional, marvelled at what his fellow Surrey golfer had done. “It’s hard to make the transition from amateur to professional but Lottie made it look easy…She’s an incredible talent.”
In early February, the now 45-year-old Rose moved to No,3 in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) following a T3 finish at the ’25 US Open and a win in the recent Farmer’s Insurance tournament with record score of 23-under par.
For another in their 40s, you can only wish that this year’s US Solheim Cup captain, Angela Stanford, had not retired. Had she kept going, she would be trying for a repeat of her 2012 win in Singapore. On the evening of that week’s pro-am dinner, Stanford had studied a story on the back of the menu saying that the HSBC had been won by an assortment of different nationalities “but not by an American”. And that’s when she thought, “I might as well give it a try”. After a six-hour final round which included a delay for an electrical storm, Stanford won at the third extra hole
