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Paige Spiranac has had enough of the rumors regarding her 2015 Dubai Ladies Masters appearance.
“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 earshot of me. It was tough,” Spiranac, 32, said while speaking with Mel Rid and Kira Dixon on a recent episode of their Quiet Please! podcast.
“It was my first pro event — it was really difficult,” she continued. I just wanted to be liked and I played so bad. It was horrendous.”
The model was a rising social media star and online influencer known for posting photos of her somewhat sultry golf outfits when she received a sponsor’s invite to the tournament — what many at the time thought to be above her level of play. Spiranac — who was 23 at the time — said she understands why her appearance at the tournament may have “ruffled feathers” within the golfing community.
“You work your ass off, week in and week out, and here comes me and I just walk on in,” she told Rid and Dixon.
Spiranac also admitted in the episode that she was not ready for the media frenzy that accompanied her appearance.
“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,” she said. “I went from having 500 followers to 100,000 followers.”
She added, “I got this invite to play an LET [Ladies European Tournament]. 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 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.”
Spiranac ended up shooting 77 and 79, missing the cut required to continue on in the tournament at the time. But it’s how she was treated during the tournament – and the rumors she was forced to endure – that she says impacted her the most and left her suffering from depression.
“Yeah, that was, like, the worst moment of my life,” she continued. “I’ll never forget that.”
In a 2018 interview with Sports Illustrated, Spiranac again discussed how comments about her physical appearance and play on the golf course impacted her prior to the tournament.
“I was sitting in the bathroom just balling and was like, ‘I don’t want to go through this pain, this feeling of helplessness. Being alone. Scared.’ And I said I never wanted anyone to feel the way I felt in that moment,” she told the publication at the time. “I was bullied so bad, to the point that I didn’t want to live anymore.”
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