Paige Spiranac slams critics who now ‘oversexualize’ themselves to build brand after years of outrage at her

Golfer Paige Spiranac has built up an enormous following on social media with more than 3.7 million followers on Instagram and over 1.5 million on TikTok.

Spiranac was a standout golfer at San Diego State before getting into the influencer space in the sports world. She appeared on the latest episode of “Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre” and was asked about female influencers in the space and whether there was a sense of community there.

“I stick to myself. I’m very introverted. I just kind of keep my head down, do my work, and get done with it. But if any of the young girls reach out to me I am more than willing to give advice,” she said.

“I think I’m a little bit more guarded because of all of the hate that I have received from women in the industry, so I’m kind of hesitant to reach out or want to collaborate because I’ve been burned in the past, but if any of them reach out I’m always willing to lend a helping hand.”

Spiranac said she received some backlash from LPGA golfers when she first tried to play professionally.

“When I first got into the industry and when I was trying to play professionally a lot of the LPGA players did not like me and were very outspoken toward that, and as well as a lot of influencers who came up behind me, they were saying that they didn’t want to take the path that I was taking, they weren’t going to ‘oversexualize’ themselves, and they turned around and do the exact same thing.

“Sometimes there’s just not a level of respect for everything that I’ve been through, and if I didn’t do this then they wouldn’t even be doing this now. They wouldn’t even have a job without all the hardships that I’ve faced and the path I paved for them.”

Spiranc opened up more about her pursuit of playing golf professionally back in an episode of her podcast, “Playing A Round.” She said she was doing everything she could to get the LPGA Tour card but she began to grow a bigger following on social media.

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“I was playing really well and then my whole life flipped upside down,” Spiranac said. “I blew up on social media. I didn’t end up going back to be the assistant coach. I didn’t even finish my last semester of college. I never got my degree, which is something that’s so crazy and I’ve never talked about that. I was two credits short of getting my degree.”

She noted that things really took a turn when she traveled to Dubai to play.

“… I then got the invite to go play in Dubai. I blew up there. I did one year of playing golf professionally, and I was just mentally exhausted. In golf, you fail more than you succeed, and I was doing that in the public eye. Everyone was telling me, ‘You should quit. You should give up. You’re not good.’”

“All of these things, and I was already dealing with these mental issues of years and years and years of trying so hard and coming up short, and I just broke. I honestly cracked. I broke and I just stopped. I said, ‘Maybe I’ll go back,’ and I’ve never gone back to try and play golf professionally again.”

She currently works with several brands and attends events as a golf influencer. Spiranac said she is content with her current career, but if she had the choice, she would pick playing competitively over influencing.

“If I had the choice to be doing what I’m doing to play on the LPGA Tour, I would probably pick the LPGA Tour because that was just a goal that I’ve always wanted to achieve and it was a dream of mine – and I wish I could’ve checked that off before I went over into doing media work full time,” Spiranac said. “But that’s not how life works.”

Fox News’ Chantz Martin contributed to this report.