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Meet Paige Spiranac, the colourful and divisive golfer, who has more Instagram followers than Tiger Woods
Paige Spiranac is genuine golf talent, but faces accusations of sexualising the sport.
Paige Spiranac is no ordinary woman; she is special in her own right. For beginners, she is a former professional golfer, and boasts more followers on Instagram than Tiger Woods, one of the greatest linksmen in the history of the sport.
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. One may wonder why the number of her followers is bigger than that of Woods, winner of 82 PGA Tour tournaments, including 15 majors (second-best in the all-time list).
The answer is that besides golf, she also brings beauty, colour and activism to the table. Born to a ballerina mother and a businessman father, Spiranac had a brief stint as a professional golfer. On a sponsors’ invite, she played in the 2015 Dubai Ladies Masters - a Ladies European Tour event - but failed to make the cut in what was also her professional debut. The next year, she won her first professional title on the Cactus Tour in Phoenix but that was that!
If truth be told, Spiranac never had the support of fellow women golfers who thought she was sexualising the sport. The 30-year-old would dress up glamorously and other female golfers would frown upon her. In order to finance her golfing career, she took to social media and before long she became a massive hit.
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 mommy, and the LPGA don't see eye to eye. She has been vocal about the free availability of feminine products at golf courses so that life is easier for female golfers as well as female fans during long rounds. Though of late she has refrained from commenting on the LPGA and female golfers much in what appears some kind of silent treatment on her part.
In a manner of speaking, the 2022 Maxim World's Sexiest Woman has been titillating at times, having been part of conversations some may deem ludicrous, bordering on the vulgar. Like once she revealed how she doesn't wear undies while playing and how she doesn’t mind too much to show a bit of her cleavage. Owing to her unapologetic dressing style, she has often been a victim of cyber-bullying and has received death threats. In her defence, Spiranac is just not all about titillating stuff. On her social media handles, she posts a lot of golf content where she shares nuanced tips with aspirants.
Recently, Spiranac co-authored a children's book - Hattie Goes Golfing - with her sister Lexie Mitchell. The golf diva has admitted that the fictitious work has many parallels to the story of her own. It’s the story of a gopher named Hattie who is discouraged and ridiculed for having golfing aspirations but she is relentless and eventually she triumphs over the haters.
With the sexually-explicit platforms like OnlyFans coming into existence, many speculated that Spiranac, sooner or later, would end up there but the golf diva has been clear as day in this regard. She has no intention to get into adult content production. In fact to leverage her social media influence, earlier this year she launched her own platform OnlyPaige where her exclusive golfing content is available for her subscribers.
If cricket is a gentleman’s game, golf is an elite gentleman's sport. For as long as one can remember it’s been a conservative sport. The arrival of Paige Spiranac has certainly added colour to it. In fact, taking a cue from her, there are now many golf influencers like Holly Sonders and Hailey Rae Ostrom who are now almost as popular as Spiranac. While Spiranac's means toward popularity could be questioned, there is no denying that women's golf desperately needed a bold voice to bring to authority's attention the issues women golfers have been facing from time immemorial.
