How Charley Hull’s viral cigarette lit up the golf world: ‘It’s a little surreal’

England’s top golfer, a newly minted cult hero after being snapped smoking at the US Open, has the whole-mood swagger of John Daly by way of Kate Moss – and the game to back it up

Tobacco has been having a pretty good week. First we had those images of Paul Mescal and Natalie Portman looking like a starry-eyed advertisement for divorce and May-December romance as they took a smoke break outside some bar in Islington. Then along came Charley Hull, the 28-year-old English golfer who set the internet ablaze when she signed autographs for a gaggle of adoring fans at last week’s US Women’s Open in Pennsylvania with a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. There were several admirers awaiting her signature (and one indisputably grown-ass man who slipped her his number), and she didn’t bother to stub out the ciggie as she moved from fan to fan.

It’s easy to fall for Hull’s smooth ponytail and IDGAF swagger, but the viral images only tell part of the story. As she told a gallery of reporters on Sunday after carding a three-under 67 in the final round at Lancaster Country Club, she rarely goes for alcohol (“I don’t need to drink because I can have a fun time without it”), and she has started smoking old-fashioned cigarettes as a way to limit her nicotine consumption. You can vape anywhere, you see, but you can’t light up indoors.

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