Heading into this year’s Solheim Cup, 28-year-old Brit Charley Hull is arguably playing the best golf of anyone on the European Solheim Cup team. She’s certainly gone the most viral this year. She’s also just about as plucky as golfers get on the LPGA — a useful quality ahead of this week’s showdown in Virginia.

So why was Hull “gutted” the first time she qualified for the European team? Read on. This interview originally appeared in the September issue of GOLF Magazine.

The scene: Hull is calling from Foxhills CC in Surrey, England, capping off a practice session.

Dylan Dethier: You grew up in a small town a couple hours north of London. What’s your first golfing memory?

Charley Hull: When I was, like, three, I’d play with my dad down at his golf course, Kettering Golf Club. I used to just walk around with him at first. Then we’d play.

DD: Did you play other sports or was it always golf?

CH: I did play [soccer] and stuff like that, but I spent every day at the golf course.

DD: And were you good at the game right away?

CH: Yeah. Everyone used to say I always had that “natural talent.”

DD: What’s the first time you remember being clearly good in a way that was different from everyone else?

CH: When I was seven years old, I beat a 17-year-old boy, and I think that’s when people started saying, “Ooh, she’s pretty good.”

DD: What was his reaction?

CH: He was mad. After I beat him, he just said, “F—ing girls.”

DD: Did you really love the game or was it just, y’know, part of your life?

CH: I loved it. It was all I knew, really, so I didn’t think about it. But I just loved being on the golf course.

DD: Now you’ve been a pro for over a decade. Do you have the same relationship with the sport as you did when you started?

CH: I don’t know. It’s something that’s been in my life — well, I’m 28, so for, like, 26 years. So I’m just so used to it. It’s my routine. When I don’t have it, I feel lost.

DD: When you made the 2013 Solheim Cup team, you were the youngest Cupper in history. What do you remember from that week?

CH: So, my first Solheim Cup came when I was 17, and in singles I played Paula Creamer, who was one of my idols, and I beat her 5 and 4 and got her autograph afterward. I wasn’t trying to be like, “Oh, I got the autograph of the golfer I beat.” My friend had asked me to get it and so I did.

DD: Do you remember Solheim feeling different than a typical event?