[PHOTO: David Cannon]
For whatever reason, golf fans go bananas at the sight of a golfer with a cigarette dangling from their lips. We all know smoking is bad for your health, wallet and the environment, but there’s something charmingly anachronistic about a professional athlete in the year 2024 sucking down a bunger in the middle of competition. Call it the Arnie effect.
In years past, on-course smoking has largely been the domain of good ol’ boys like John Daly and random Europeans like Daniel Brown, but in recent months LPGA star Charley Hull has become the poster girl for dart destruction. The world No.11 has gone viral for lighting up on the course time and time again, turning her vice into a veritable fashion statement. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your personal opinions on smoking), Hull won’t be rocking her signature smokes at Le Golf National this week due to an Olympic rule that she says could very well impact her performance.
[What follows is an excerpt from Hull’s press conference at Le Golf National]
Q: What’s it like over the last couple of months to be as famous now for smoking on the course as your great play? Are you comfortable with that?
CHARLEY HULL: I don’t actually go on Instagram. I haven’t gone on Instagram in about four or five months. I don’t go on social media or anything. I just let my agent do it. I just concentrate on my golf and just hang out with Georgia off the golf course.
Q: Do you smoke on the course?
CHARLEY HULL: Yeah, I do smoke on the course. It’s a habit but I won’t do this week. Yeah, just something I do.
Q: Why don’t you do it this week?
CHARLEY HULL: I don’t think you’re allowed.
Q: Is that right?
CHARLEY HULL: Yeah.
Q: Will that affect you? Does it help you?
CHARLEY HULL: Yeah, I think it will. Because it relaxes me a little bit. But it is what it is.
Q: I thought the French would allow you to smoke?
CHARLEY HULL: Hopefully, yeah.
According to the official 2024 Olympics Spectator Information, smoking is prohibited at Olympic venues at the Paris Games except for in select smoking areas. France recently implemented a nationwide crackdown on public smoking, prohibiting tobacco use in parks, beaches and other public areas while also banning disposable e-cigarettes and announcing a price hike to €13 a pack in 2027. The country’s goal is to create a generation “free of tobacco” by 2032.
Though our reporters at Le Golf National have said the policies do not appear to be strictly enforced, they may still impact Hull, who uses tobacco and nicotine to “stay relaxed” on the course. Earlier his year she told National Club Golfer that her 75-year-old father has smoked 40 cigarettes since the age of 12. “My whole family smokes,” she said, “so it’s not something I’ve noticed as being odd.”
We’ll see what impact, if any, the 2024 Olympic’s smoking policy has on Hull’s performance when the women’s golf competition begins later today, but fans hoping for another viral smoking moment may have to stub out their expectations.
