WHEAT RIDGE, COLORADO: Paige Spiranac, a golf influencer, had a successful amateur golf career. She participated in the Cactus Tour. She did, however, only win one professional event during her career. The internet sensation recently had an Instagram Q&A session with her fans during her live broadcast where she opened up about her professional golf journey and explained why she doesn't like playing during tours.
Spiranac, who turned to professional golf in 2015, spent the majority of her time on the Cactus Tour. She sought to get an LPGA Tour card in 2016 but was unsuccessful, and she shortly began her modeling career. Spiranac has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines, including Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and Maxim. She is one of the world's most successful golf influencers.
'I couldn't hack it, mentally'
During her recent Instagram live, Spiranac answered various questions, one of which was concerning the reasons she didn't play during tour. One of her fans questioned, "Main reason you did not like playing on tour?" Hearing this, Spiranac responded, "It's lonely, expensive, mentally and physically exhausting. I couldn't handle it mentally. I played practice rounds and then fall to pieces under any type of pressure and I knew I wasn't cut out for it because I couldn't hack it, mentally."
The golf influencer went on to say, "Also in golf, it's a different environment than any other sports and it's constantly up and down, up and down and for me the highs aren't the way the lows and the lows are just torment." She added, "It aches me apart and I had to do therapy to get all through all my years of the career of golf because it absolutely destroyed me. It's not, not for me."
Paige Spiranac's golf journey
Spiranac has a large following base across all of her social media sites. She has nearly four million Instagram followers. Spianac grew up playing a range of sports because her family was active. Her mother was a professional ballerina, while her father was a University of Pittsburgh football player. Gymnastics was Spiranac's passion as a child. When she was 12, she hurt her kneecap twice and switched her focus to golf.
She had a successful junior career, winning five events, including the 2010 CWGA Junior Stroke Play, and ranked in the top 20 junior golf players in the world. While playing on the junior circuit, Spiranac concluded as a top 5 college recruit, first-team All-American, and two-time West Region Player of the Year, which helped her earn a scholarship to the University of Arizona.
During her freshman year in college, the best score she managed to achieve was 73, which she earned twice. Spiranac went on to place fifth in the Cal Classic, win the Mountain West Championship, and placed 19th at the NCAA Central Regional Championship at San Diego State. She retired as a professional athlete in 2016 at the age of 29 and became a golf influencer.
