'I Left Actually A Good Four Shots Out There' - Charley Hull Shoots Career Best LPGA Round But Had A 59 On Her Mind

A bogey-free 63 at the Ford Championship gave Charley Hull her best ever round on the LPGA Tour, but it could've been even better as she felt a 59 was on the cards at one point.

The Whirlwind Golf Club in Arizona was an apt name for the course Hull blew away with nine birdies - five of them coming in a six-hole stretch around the turn that had her thinking about that magical 59.

And had a few more putts dropped than breaking 60 may well have been on for Hull - such was the form she showed when finding all 18 greens in regulation.

"I feel like I left actually a good four shots out there," said Hull. "Like the last I lipped on the left edge. The hole before I left it like an inch short.

"Then I missed birdie putt on the front nine, and that was like from like six feet. So I'm looking back thinking, oh, I could have done more.

"When I was coming down I think it was the 4th hole today, so like the 12th or 13th hole, I was like, oh, I could try and shoot 59. Then I missed the putt on that hole.

"But no, I was just trying to go as low as I could. To be fair, like my boyfriend said to me, what will make me happy is seeing you on the top of the leaderboard and just smash it. That's what I had in my head and I just wanted to do like do that."

The Englishwoman put some of her success down to an equipment change for the tournament, as the World No.10 switched to TaylorMade's Qi35 LS driver for this week.

Hull has also become known for her fitness routine and athletic approach to the game - even citing her major aim for 2025 was not a golfing goal but to get her 5K run time down.

And her fitness regime does not stop just because there's a tournament on, as she put in a full early morning gym session before then going out to shoot 63.

"I was up at 2:30," Hull explained. "Because I wanted to speak to my family and that back at home, and then I ran just a little 7k and then I had some rowing thresholds to do, and then I trained my lower body, so like my legs.

"I was in the gym from 4:00 until 6:00."

That energetic start to the day obviously does the trick as Hull is in a rich vein of form having finished in the top 20 in her last eight straight events, three of them top-fives.

Hull's career-best round only gives her a one-shot lead at the Ford Championship over Denmark's Nanna Koerstz Madsen though, with her 64 followed by eight players shooting 65 on a day of low scoring.

But although Hull's aggressive play lends itself to a birdiefest, she insists she prefers a tougher golfing challenge.

"I like the Majors when they're long, hard, and tight," said Hull. "That's usually my favorite kind of golf. I wish we played more - I wish they made it more like that on the LPGA. That's why I always like the harder golf courses, which are usually the majors anyway."