MAUREEN MADILL COLUMN: LIVING AND LOVING THIS GAME
England’s Charley Hull with the trophy after winning the PIF Saudi Ladies International at Riyadh Golf Club (Photo: Tristan Jones/ LET)
GUEST COLUMN: BY MAUREEN MADILL
The golfing week started off in a very entertaining fashion. I was looking forward to the opening tournament of the season on the Ladies’ European tour and with the PIF Saudi Ladies’ International being hosted at Riyadh Golf Club that meant a Wednesday start and a Saturday finish.
One of the pre-tournament press conferences featured Solheim Cup teammates Charley Hull and newly married Carlota Ciganda of Spain. There’s not much seems to phase Charley, on or off the course but Carlota’s admission that she had just gone 42 days without touching a club or playing golf was enough to leave the Englishwoman open-mouthed in disbelief. Admittedly the Spaniard’s wedding fell in the middle of that time frame.
“Did you miss it?” Charley demanded, hijacking the press conference. “Not one bit,” came the response. Charley then revealed she once hadn’t played for two days and her family shooed her back to the course because she was so miserable and difficult to live with. She didn’t need telling twice.
There’s no doubt the golf course is Charley’s happy place and, despite not yet having reached her 30th birthday, last week saw her begin her fourteenth season on tour. She just loves competing and her swashbuckling style is very well suited to chasing down the leaders, which is exactly what was required of her last weekend. She put the afterburners on late in the round, covering the last eight holes in six under par to come home in 31 blows and finish on 19 under. One by one her rivals failed to match her and the title and rather large trophy were Charley’s without the need for a play-off.
Never dull, or one to miss an opportunity, Hull whipped out her phone and sent a picture of her most recent prize to the carpenter charged with building her trophy cabinet for her newly renovated home. She explained that she’d seen a picture on social media of Justin Rose’s trophy cabinet and had decided to copy it – but that this latest prize would definitely need a little more elbow room. She had already relayed all the measurements she thought necessary but realised before the trophy presentation that amendments had to be sent back to England.
With the large trophy came a very large cheque ($750,000) – the largest outside a major in the women’s game. Pretty timely after an expensive building project.
It’s all a far cry from my first season on tour in 1986 when our 20 tournament schedule yielded a total prize fund of £665,000. In today’s money that’s roughly equivalent to £2.5 million. The tour’s 2026 schedule features 30 tournaments and a projected total prize fund of (gulp) more than 39 million euros – that’s roughly £34 million. For those of us of a certain age, most of whom can be found on a certain “founders plus others” WhatsApp group, that’s an extraordinary sum to get your head round.
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A throwback to days gone by when persimmon woods and different prize money was on offer on the professional circuit.
Of course, expenses and costs rise exponentially but even so. It’s amazing to think that nowadays two young women like Charley and Carlota, at ages 29 and 35 respectively, can have amassed, worldwide, roughly £12 million and £10 million apiece, not taking anything other than prize money into consideration. You can certainly afford a decent house renovation with that.
Even in our heyday very few of us would have held a candle to Charley – except in one respect. Most of us had that same deep, deep love for the game running through our core. You certainly can’t say we were seduced by the vast riches on offer. That love was nurtured, of course, in our amateur days and recently one member of the aforementioned WhatsApp group (and a founder member of the LET) posted a newspaper cutting for us all to see.
It detailed the 1974 Scottish Girls’ Open Strokeplay Championship at Stranraer and it was very special to the teenage Madill girls as it was the first time we travelled alone together to an event. No parents!
We caught the ferry from Ireland to Scotland and dragged our clubs and suitcases from the ferry port down into Stranraer town in order to locate our accommodation. We had no car or transport to make life easy but, even then, I was unwilling to make things more difficult than they needed to be. We needed somewhere to dump our stuff while we found exactly where we were going so we hit on the notion of going to the police station and asking them to look after our bags and clubs.
In hindsight I think they were rather bemused but I seem to recall that a few of them were members of the golf club and they duly looked after everything for us. Those were the days….! We did find our digs in the end and the club sorted transport to and from the course for us each day. The hospitality was unforgettable and I don’t suppose we realised that many of us were just beginning a wonderful, magical journey through the world of golf.
That love of the game, which we share with Charley Hull, has given us all so much – perhaps not the riches she enjoys but for many, a very good living and what price those fabulous, precious, enduring friendships?
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