In a family home near Yeovil, a young girl walks past the television on a Sunday evening and her eyes light upon a screen of bright pink azaleas. Drawn in by the pretty flowers, she ends up watching the Masters. By the time that José María Olazábal pulls on the green jacket, she is hooked. “I want to be a professional golfer,” she tells her mum and stepfather. Henrietta Brockway is 9 years old.

The parents never expect to hear golf mentioned again, but, eight months later, their daughter demands her first set of clubs for Christmas. Within a couple of years she is down to a single-figure handicap and her stepfather has to erect an outdoor light in the garden so she can practise all hours on winter evenings, filming herself with a camcorder.

At the age of 17, she wins the Girls' British Open Amateur Championship. Next week brings her first professional tournament. Nine years almost to the day since she first gazed at the pink of the Augusta National on television, she is about to achieve her childhood dream of playing professional golf.

Now going by the name of Henrietta Zuel - she recently switched to her mother's maiden name after her parents' divorce - “Henni” hopes the Spanish Open will be the first step on the path to becoming the world's leading female golfer. She has not stinted in her preparation, with Nick Faldo and David Beckham among her guiding forces.

Personal success is paramount although she is aware of her wider potential. As a young, black, female athlete, Zuel is capable of broadening the game's appeal in the same way that Tiger Woods made it cool to be a golfer. And, girl, does the women's game need the help.

The total pot for next week's tournament in Spain is less than €300,000 (about £237,000). For the men, it is €2million. Women's golf is the poor relation, quite literally, in Europe.

Lorena Ochoa, the world's outstanding female golfer from Mexico, who won her second successive major at the weekend in America, does not lack riches (she earned more than £2million in prize-money alone last year). But would you recognise her in Tesco? “It would be great if I could make the game more accessible,” Zuel says. “Young girls don't really see it.”

She hopes to attract attention on account of her talent, although looking like a member of the Sugababes cannot do any harm. As the Golf Babes website puts it, “She shouldn't have any trouble drawing sponsor exemptions given her arresting look.”

Michelle Wie succeeded in raising the profile of women's golf by competing against the men, but after missing countless cuts, it was debatable whether the attention was positive. Zuel, 18, will not be going down that road.

“I don't believe in it,” she says. “For starters, there are the physical differences. I really don't feel that women have anything to prove.

“I compare it to tennis where the women have a very successful sport, something a lot of people enjoy watching in its own right. My priority is to improve the women's game, not compete with the men.” Not that she is afraid of male competition. Raised with two brothers, Zuel has never lacked toughness. “That's from having to play army instead of Barbie and always having to pretend it didn't hurt when you fell out of trees,” she says. At Yeovil Golf Club, she would spend all her time competing against boys.

At 12, she started playing in the Faldo Series, which was formed to encourage young golfers. She was involved for four years, travelling to America and Asia and spending time with the great man himself.

“Nick was very engaging, he gave us a lot of attention,” she said. “We mainly spoke about course management. Being young, you just want to go for every flag, take everything on, no fear. Nick has such a great mind for working out where to put the ball and how to get it there.” By 16, she was starting to take time off school to play in tournaments and she missed some of her GCSE exams to play in the Italian Open. “It wasn't such a hard decision,” she says. “It was further education or golf and, while I would love to go to university, I knew which way I was heading.”

Going full time has allowed her to adopt a daily schedule, including a gym session before breakfast. Length off the tee should not be an issue, given that she claims to average about 260 yards - Ochoa territory.

Among her amateur achievements is the course record at Liphook, in Hampshire, where they seemed reluctant to mount her card on the clubhouse wall, the traditional honour. “I think a 16-year-old girl beating the men's champion didn't go down very well,” she says.

It is the only small sign of resistance she has encountered, perhaps surprisingly given that many English golf clubs remain a bastion of stuffiness. “I can say I've never felt hostility at any golf course in England and I have been to a lot. I know there are men-only bars and that type of thing, but I am there just to enjoy the course. I find the old habits quite endearing.”

Her colour may become an issue if she is successful, but, she hopes, only in the same way that Lewis Hamilton has proved a pioneer in Formula One: showing that the elite strata of the sport is open to everyone.

Woods has been criticised - and will be again in Masters week - for not using his status to speak against prejudice, but Zuel shares Woods's attitude of not looking for trouble.

“I don't think it is necessary to get involved in race debates because I don't think it is predominate in golf,” she says. “I haven't come across it. Why make a big deal if it is not an issue in your life?

“Maybe Tiger has changed attitudes just by being the world's best golfer. That is how I'd like to do it. I think the game has changed and it is not off-limits to anyone. It is a question of raising the profile, getting young girls involved and showing you don't have to wear bad clothes.”

Zuel will do her bit by wearing outfits modelled on a 1930s style and bucking the trend of garishly coloured T-shirts. She shares a love of fashion with Beckham, whom she has met through mutual contacts at 19 Entertainment, the management group that runs American Idol, the England football team's commercial interests and the Spice Girls.

She met Beckham for dinner when, although softly spoken almost to the point of shyness, Zuel impressed with the quiet intensity of her ambition. She says that they discussed practice schedules, not fame and fortune.

“When I dream of what I can do in the future,” she says, “it is of me walking up the 18th fairway with my name on the leaderboard, not being on the cover of Hello! It has to be about the golf.” Succeed at that and the magazine covers will follow.