Charley Hull shot record 65 at Riviera and told a hilarious story about Malibu and 'Barbie'

LOS ANGELES — The women’s competitive course record at Riviera Country Club has been a moving target at the U.S. Women’s Open because the historic layout had never hosted a women’s tournament before.

On Thursday it was Jennifer Kupcho who set the first ecord with a 66. The best anyone could do on Friday was Nelly Korda's 67. And then with the sun out and pin positions more benign, teen amateur Asterisk Talley eclipsed that early in Saturday's round with a 66.

That mark stood for about an hour because Charley Hull did one better, shooting 65 in a round of eight birdies. It's a score that could possibly stand as the best women’s round here for years to come.

Hull started the day seven shots off the lead, and when the leaders had finished in the early evening, she was only three shots back of leaders Nelly Korda and Sei Young Kim. On Sunday she will trying to win her fourth tour title and first major.

“I kind of like chasing,” she said after the round. “I just find it more fun and just I can then be free and then just play golf how I wanna play golf.”

That it was Hull who pulled it off the stunningly strong round was a mix of predictable and surprising. She is, after all, the seventh ranked player in the world, and Hull carries a daredevil’s cockiness when her game feels right. Or, as she said following her two-day grind simply to make the cut, “Just couldn't get a putt [to fall], so kind of just stuck in there and just went at everything today and just thought, ‘F--k it.”

That’s Charley. Ulfiltered.

She doesn’t hesitate to say whatever comes to mind, and when she was asked about how she was feeling about her game coming into the week, she bluntly admitted that her confidence wasn’t great.

“I haven't been hitting it my best in the weeks coming into it. And I've just got my feels now, just keeping it simple, trying not to think,” Hull said.

The “thinking,” she said, has included late-night viewings of her own swing videos, trying to recapture some of the feel that has produced good results in the past. But then confusing herself with too much information. “Why can't it be like that or this and that?" Hull says of her ruminations. "Sometimes, you just gotta cancel out.”

Nothing is much better for that than off-the-course distractions, and in that Hull has a helper this week. She’s been doing touristy things with her visiting cousin, and their biggest caper came on Friday night when they drove to Malibu because Hull said it was the cousin’s "lifelong dream" to visit the beach city known by movie watchers and “People” readers for movie stars frolicking on the beach. Or for Ken and "Malibu" Barbie hanging out in their van.

“She thought it was gonna be this amazing place,” Hull told a small group of highly entertained reporters. “She thought that was gonna be, you know, like the ‘Barbie’ movie—like, where you see, people walking around [with] the surfboards going down the ocean.”

Then they got to Malibu and it wasn’t nearly what the cousin pictured. Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie were nowhere in sight.

“She's, like, ‘My lifelong dream's been crushed.’ She's devastated. It was absolutely hilarious,” Hull said with a laugh. “So it just made it 10 times as funny. … I was just wetting myself the whole night, honestly.”

There wasn’t nearly going to be the same excitement on Saturday night, with just small plans to get Mexican food for dinner. Hull glanced at her watch and cheerfully excused herself. She was running late for an ice bath and red-light sauna. And hopefully not a minute spent watching swing videos.