Charley Hull knows links golf better than most. English by birth and raised on the game at Kettering Golf Club, she’s spent her career on the Ladies European Tour’s windswept, firm-ground courses, backed by two runner-up finishes at the Women’s British Open, in 2023 and 2025. Just a day before the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, she spoke about the patience the format demands, admitting that strange bounces and awkward lies are simply part of the bargain.

“You can get bad bounces, and you can have funky shots and stuff. So you just have to accept them and just kind of just deal with it,” Hull said on Wednesday.

On Thursday at Dundonald Links, those words came back to haunt her most cruelly. Standing over a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-5 fifth, the Englishwoman chose to let the contours do the work. Instead, the green fought back.

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01/10

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3451

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What looked like a routine birdie chance turned into one of the most astonishing holes of the season. Hull’s putt slid past the cup, gathered speed on the slope and rolled completely off the green. From there, the nightmare only worsened. Her first chip failed to climb the ridge and rolled back to her feet. So did the second. Then the third.

She even changed clubs in search of an answer, but the result barely changed. It took four chip attempts before she finally kept the ball on the putting surface, and she eventually holed out for a quadruple bogey nine. Playing partner Nelly Korda had encountered the same treacherous area moments earlier, but Hull paid the full price for taking on the green.

Hull had also warned that links golf leaves little room for error. “You have to be precise where you’re pitching it because you can get random bounces and also release a lot more in different parts on the golf course. You have to be more strategic, shall I say,” she said before the tournament.

Hull signed for a six-over 78 in the first round, after one of the most remarkable sequences seen on the LPGA this season. There are bad holes, and then there are holes that become cautionary tales. Hull’s fifth was firmly the latter. Yet, as astonishing as it was, she was hardly the first elite golfer to discover that one treacherous green can undo an entire round.

Phil Mickelson also battled a green that refused to cooperate

Long before Dundonald reduced Charley Hull to a spectator of her own golf ball, Shinnecock Hills had already shown how quickly a green can seize control of a round. During the third round of the 2018 U.S. Open, Phil Mickelson watched an 18-foot bogey putt race past the hole and gather enough pace to roll off the 13th green.

Rather than let it keep running, Mickelson jogged after the moving ball and struck it back toward the hole, accepting a two-stroke penalty. “It was going to go down in the same spot behind the bunker,” he later explained. “I wasn’t going to have a shot.” He made a 10 on the hole and eventually signed for an 11-over 81, ending any realistic chance of contending.

The moment sparked one of the most debated rules incidents in recent major history, but it also shone a harsh light on Shinnecock’s glass-like greens. As players struggled throughout the day, Zach Johnson claimed the USGA had “lost the golf course,” while officials insisted Mickelson’s penalty was correctly applied under Rule 14-5.

Hull’s nightmare unfolded differently, but both episodes served the same reminder. On some greens, the safest place for the ball is the hole. Everywhere else is an argument waiting to happen. She’ll carry that six-over start into Friday’s second round at Dundonald Links, needing a sharp turnaround just to play the weekend, a tall order after the very format she called herself well-prepared for produced her worst hole of the season.