LPGA’s ‘Overpaid’ Hull Plays For A Higher Purpose

Katherine Hull wants to achieve all the things you would expect of a young professional golfer. She wants to win tournaments, break into the top league of players and have a long, successful career.

For Hull, 25, who has earned $566,000 on the LPGA tour, such trivial problems as wet grips and missed putts are viewed from a perspective different from that of most of her colleagues.

While she recognizes being successful is helpful for existence, she also believes that professional athletes, including women golfers, are “way overpaid”.

But she also sees her profession as a means to an end. She had a life-changing experience last year when she visited Rwanda with other women golfers who have formed the group, Golf Fore Africa.

“It changes your perspective of what poverty really is. Such desperation and need matched by inspiration and hope”

Hull sponsors three children through World Vision and met one of them in Rwanda. “I broke down as I was leaving,” she said. “I knew what he was going back to and what I was going back to.”

Rather than dwell on what she saw in Rwanda, Hull is using it as motivation.

“I know that we are able to make a lot of money playing golf, probably more than we should,” she said. “But one of my goals is to build a school in Rwanda, so that’s a big motivation to play well.”