Meet Paige Spiranac: Colorful golfer with more Insta followers than Tiger Woods

Yes, you read it right! She has close to 4 million followers on the social media platform. Woods, on the other hand, has 3.3 million followers. You may wonder why his followers outnumber Woods, winner of 82 PGA Tour tournaments, including 15 majors (second best on the all-time list).

The answer is that she brings beauty, color and activism to the table, apart from golf. Born to a ballerina mother and a businessman father, Spiranac had a brief stint as a professional golfer. At the invitation of sponsors, she played in the 2015 Dubai Women’s Masters – a Women’s European Tour event – but also failed to make the cut in her professional debut. The following year, she won her first professional title on the Cactus Tour in Phoenix but that was it!

If the truth be told, Spiranac never had the support of fellow golfers who thought she was sexualizing the sport. The 30-year-old would dress up elegantly and be mocked by other female golfers. To finance her golf career, she turned to social media and for a long time she was very successful.

In 2017, Spiranac took a dig at the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) after it banned shorts, leggings and plunging necklines in women’s golf. One can do their math and figure out why Spiranac, now known as the golf mom, and the LPGA don’t see eye to eye. She said free feminine products are available at golf courses to make life easier for female golfers and female fans during long rounds. Although she has recently refrained from commenting on the LPGA and women golfers a lot in some kind of quiet treatment on her side.

In a way of speaking, Maxim World’s Sexiest Woman 2022 has cried at times, having been part of conversations that some may consider bleak, bordering on the vulgar. Like ever she revealed that she doesn’t wear undies while playing and doesn’t mind showing off a bit of her cleavage. Because of her unapologetic style of dressing, she has often been the victim of cyberbullying and death threats. In his defense, Spiranac is not about titillating things. On her social media handles, she posts a lot of golf content where she shares nuanced tips with aspirants.

Most recently, Spiranac co-authored a children’s book – Hattie Goes Golfing – with her sister Lexie Mitchell. The golf diva admitted that there are many similarities between the fake work and her own story. This is the story of a gopher named Hattie who is discouraged and ridiculed for wanting to play golf but she is persistent and eventually wins over the shepherds.

With the emergence of sexually explicit platforms like OnlyFans, many people speculated that Spiranac would sooner or later end but the golfing diva is clear as it is today. She has no intention of producing adult content. In fact to leverage her influence on social media, she launched her own platform OnlyPaige earlier this year where her exclusive golf content is available to her subscribers.

If cricket is a gentleman’s game, golf is an elite gentleman’s sport. For as long as one can remember it has been a conservative sport. The arrival of Paige Spiranac certainly colored it. In fact, taking a cue from her, many golf influencers such as Holly Sonders and Hailey Rae Ostrom are now almost as popular as Spiranac. Although Spiranac’s question may have gained popularity, he does not deny that women’s golf desperately needed a bold voice to draw the attention of the authorities to the issues that have faced women golfers since the beginning of time.