Some people are bothered by Charley Hull’s smoking habit because it endangers the hard-work ethos

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At the recent Paris Olympics, a big deal was made about British golfer Charley Hull and smoking.

Hull, the 12th-ranked pro on the LPGA Tour, became famous earlier this year after being filmed signing autographs, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. She looked like a Brummie Steve McQueen.

Everyone expected Hull to apologize and beg forgiveness. That’s what most of her peers would do. They’d think of the children. More important, they’d think of Gatorade and Rolex.

Instead, Hull leaned into it. She’s the only top athlete in the world who revels in being a smoker (which is very different than being the only top athlete in the world who is a smoker).

She isn’t a John Daly sort of smoker – someone who looks like they’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel and couldn’t really care less. That sort of smoker is still tolerable, because they are instructive.

Hull looks like what she is – a remarkably fit, 28-year-old top pro at the peak of her powers. Sixty years ago, she’d be an ad for Pall Malls. The contrast upsets some people.

In Paris, she was asked if she would smoke in the golfing venue (which was 99-per-cent outdoors). Hull said she wouldn’t because the rules wouldn’t allow it, but it still made news everywhere. This was the entree for some tut-tutting to begin.

One could not help but be struck by the dissonance between everyone’s certainty that Hull is deeply out of line with modern etiquette and what you were seeing on the streets. You can still smoke on a patio in France. A lot of people do. The later it gets, the more people are doing it.

One of the wallpaper scenes of the Games was walking by a group of twentysomething Gendarmeries leaned up against an urban tank, nearly every single one of them sucking on a vape.

This week, Hull received a special dispensation to smoke on the course during the Solheim Cup, which is the women’s version of the Ryder Cup. This year’s competition is being held in Virginia – smoking’s spiritual home.

On the first day of competition, Hull drove a ball off the tee. Then she approached the gallery and asked for a light. Someone handed her a Bic. She sparked up a dart, said thanks and headed off down the course.

This is how cult heroes are created. If Nike could figure out how to copy this without the whole internet coming down on top of it, it would.

Based on my own non-scientific observations, it feels as though smoking’s having a moment. For the past 10, 20 years, it was remarkable to see a young person – especially a young woman – smoking while walking down the street. This summer, I started seeing that all the time. Teens and 20-somethings smoking at bus stops and in parks. Standing around on the street, staring at their phones, smoking.

I assume vaping’s to blame. They got rid of the 1.0 version of the cigarette – which stunk up the house and burned holes in your couch – and came up with a 2.0 version that solved the aesthetic problems. Meanwhile, they stopped bombarding us with anti-smoking messages.

It was only a matter of time before the cutting-edge crowd – one that hasn’t grown up being daily reminded that smoking equals death – decided to go all James Bond. The old, cool Sean Connery one, not the new, tiresome Daniel Craig one.

This week, I read about a launch party at a New York Fashion Week event that gave out branded lighters as gifts. There were bowls of cigarettes scattered around the room.

Like music people, nightlife people, academic people, money people and media people – the sort of people kids dream about becoming – fashion people have always smoked. But now it’s out in the open again.

The Rubicon here is sports people.

A lot of your sports heroes smoked. Some you knew about, and many you did not. There’s never been a time when a tennis or hockey player was congratulated for unwinding with a cheekie after practice.

On the road, I’ve run into players smoking, and you’d think I’d caught them lighting a mailbox on fire. You can spot them drinking, even drunk. You can spot them in the company of a woman who does not appear to be their wife. None of that is a problem. But smoking? That’s a problem. Or, at least, it was.

Not so long ago, Hull’s habit would have been a much bigger talking point. It might have even risen to the level of a cause.

Today, it’s so unusual that it’s treated with a shrug and a wink. Older people seem to understand that getting worked up about this will only make them look ridiculous to younger people. And what people want most in the world is never to look silly.

A lot of pros would like to be seen as iconoclasts. Considering the middlebrow consensus on smoking, Hull actually is one.

So for now, she is tolerated as an outlier. In some quarters, celebrated.

That’s as it should be. Sports is always banging on about players having the freedom to do this and that. It’s Hull’s life and her body. What she does with it is none of anybody’s business.

I wonder if a part of what bothers people about Hull is that she endangers the hard-work/chase-your-dreams ethos. Here’s a person breaking a big, basic make-it-in-sports rule and succeeding anyway. Maybe it isn’t all about hard work and constant striving. Maybe some people are just born with it. That idea unsettles people.

Whatever the case, Hull is being allowed space to do and act as she pleases. One wonders how quickly that space will shrink if a dozen more smoking pros show up on courses, fields and arenas around the world.