Paige Spiranac is proud of who she is and how she dresses, and won’t apologize to the golf community for it.
“It’s like my whole life I’m trying to find a place where I can fit in and that I feel comfortable and that I feel at peace with myself and I haven’t found that. Golf is the absolute worst place for me to be because I am the exact opposite of everything that a golfer should encompass, should be, and I’m not,” the 26-year-old Instagram sensation recently shared on her “Playing A Round” podcast, according to News.com.au.
She continued, “I’m not refined, I’m raw and real and I wear what I want and I have always been so different and golf is not that way.”
Spiranac, who starred at San Diego State and previously competed in the Omega Dubai Ladies Masters in December 2016, also vented her frustrations over golf’s “hypocrisy.”
“I feel like everyone in golf is just playing this part of this perfect golfer when in reality it’s nothing like that,” she explained, also addressing the backlash she endured over her outfit choices, which she regularly shares with her 2.2 million Instagram followers.
“I wear a tank top and I’m the s–t and I’m the w—e and I’m the one that’s ruining the game,” she said.
Spiranac said her offer to help a charity was recently rejected and claimed they told her that her reputation was the reason why.
“I wanted to help this charity out and I wanted to give them free golf clubs,” she said. “The guy wrote back and said, ‘We would love to but, because of the way our board members view you, you can’t help out.’
“I want to give back to these kids who don’t have anything, because I grew up not having anything, and I can’t even f–king do that because of my cleavage. We bond over having a common interest and we all love the same thing … I don’t understand why it matters if you’re wearing a polo (shirt) and I’m not wearing a polo. If a guy on tour wears shorts instead of pants, the world’s not going to end. In golf, people make all of these problems so serious and it’s not serious.”
Spiranac has long been candid about the criticism she’s endured, telling the Guardian in January 2018, “People seem to think I got where I am because of the clothes that I wear.”
“That’s unfair to me and unfair to all of my accomplishments,” she told the outlet. “I probably do more community service than any other professional golfer. For people to say, ‘You only show some cleavage, that’s why you have what you have,’ is unfair. That’s the injustice that we face every day as women and I see it a lot in golf.”
While Spiranac has had to overcome a series of tribulations in recent years, including a nude photo scandal, she learned to embrace her body and sent a message to haters in 2018 with a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit shoot.
“I took back my body. I took back my sexuality,” she said at the time.
