Paige Spiranac recalled the time she was accused of performing sexual favors to qualify for the 2015 Dubai Masters, as the 31-year-old recalled how she felt like a leper and how it messed with her life.
The blonde is best known these days for her status as a model and influencer, in which she uses her own sex appeal to help promote products to her four million Instagram followers.
Whilst she’s now managed to manipulate the attitudes against her to benefit her own life and career, it wasn’t always that way as she emotionally admitted it screwed with her bid to become a professional golfer.
As she shot rounds of 77 and 79 to miss the cut at the Dubai Ladies Masters, she found herself having to defend claims she used sex to get an invite to the event despite being a promising collegiate talent at the time.
“That was like the worst moment of my life,” Spiranac said to the Quite Please! Podcast. “I’ll never forget that.
“I show up and was doing hours of press, which I wasn’t prepared for. I had no training to do this. And I would say there were a couple of girls who were really supportive and who were nice.
“But the majority, it was brutal. I would go on the range and girls would just scatter. No one wanted to hit next to me.
“There were constant comments like ‘I did sexual favors to get this invite,’ and I was listening to it – and they would say [it] within earshots of me.
“It was tough. Not knowing what I was doing, it was my first pro event, it was really difficult. I just wanted to be liked and I played so bad. It was horrendous.”
Impact on Spiranac’s life
Then at the young age of just 22, the famous personality was unsure of how to handle the exposure and admitted the attitudes and whispers from her media and her colleagues took a toll on her.
Eventually, Spiranac tried to qualify for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) but missed out, and it’s unclear if her experience at the Dubai Masters is part of why she couldn’t find the key shots later in her career.
“I got this invite to play an LET (Ladies European Tournament),” Spiranac continued. “I had just turned pro, I had never played golf outside the country.
“And everyone was like, ‘It’s low key, don’t worry about it. No one is going to know if you play well or not.’
“I ended up going viral and this was back when people weren’t going viral all the time and I didn’t know how to handle it and my whole life got flipped upside down. I went from having 500 followers to 100,000 followers.”
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