[Photo: Kate McShane/R&A]
Charley Hull doubled down on a £100,000 winning scratchie-card prank she played on her caddie that drew staunch blowback on social media, urging those who found it in poor taste need to “loosen up”.
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On the eve of the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, the English star told assembled media of a joke involving her caddie Adam Woodward that involved Hull buying a fake £100,000 winning scratchie card at a joke store.
“He’s literally running around the player’s lounge saying, ‘I’ve won £100,000. I’m taking today off,'” Hull said on Wednesday at Royal Lytham. “He couldn’t believe his luck, and we had to tell him it was fake and he nearly quit the job.”
A video clip of the three-time LPGA winner recalling the prank during her press conference was posted online and has drawn almost four million views. Plenty of the comments lashed out at Hull, with one user asking, “Am I the only one who thinks this is a kind of cruel joke?”
“No. I don’t have any social media on my phone,” Hull said. “I don’t really have my social media on my phone on tournament weeks. So I delete it and when I go home I’ll add it again. I don’t really like people seeing me and tagging me and stuff. I like to keep in the present moment. But, yeah, I think people need to lighten up if they’re taking that too seriously because it was pretty funny.”
Hull said she held no regrets and would do it again because Woodward understood the humorous side of the prank.
“No; and people that have complaints about it, I would say, ‘loosen up,'” she said.
“Yeah [I would do it again], 100 percent; he thought it was funny after. He’s not uptight. Like, it’s a joke. If people don’t like it they can lump it, do you know what I mean? I mean, like I felt bad for ‘Adsy’, but at the end of the day I just got to have a good week, and at the end of the week I’ll buy him 100 scratch cards.”
None of the large gallery following Hull in the round round at Royal Lytham seemed at all bothered by the prank, with many excitedly rushing from the finish of a marquee group featuring Nelly Korda, Lydia Ko and Haeran Ryu over to home star Hull’s afternoon tee-time with Hannah Green and Brooke Henderson.
Hull gave the crowd plenty of thrills during a two-under-par 69 that left the world No.7 five shots adrift of first-round leader Jeeno Thitikul.
The 30-year-old – who is searching for a breakthrough major victory having finished second twice in the past three AIG Women’s Opens – had a simple solution, saying: “Hopefully he can earn more money than that as well this week if we play well.”
