In the world of golf, few names shine as brightly as Paige Spiranac’s. From her early swings on the lush greens to becoming a social media sensation, Paige’s journey is nothing short of inspirational. This article peels back the layers of her life, delving into the captivating story of a young athlete who not only mastered the art of golf but also captured the hearts of millions. Her achievements extend beyond the fairways, making her a modern icon in sports and beyond. As you turn these pages, you’re in for an intriguing ride through the life of golf’s dazzling star.
Get ready to be swept off your feet by the charm and prowess of Paige Spiranac. Known for her striking presence both on and off the course, Paige’s story is a compelling blend of youthful ambition, relentless dedication, and a sprinkle of glamour. This article isn’t just about her childhood dreams or her swing; it’s a celebration of her journey, from a young hopeful to a leading figure in the world of golf. Join us as we uncover the cool facts and numerous accomplishments that have cemented Paige Spiranac’s status as one of the most notable names in golf.
Paige Spiranac has been playing golf all her life, and continued to do so collegiately at San Diego State university. There, she won the All-Mountain West Conference honors during the 2012-2014 seasons, and led the Aztecs to their first Mountain West Conference Championship.
She originally started her Instagram account to post trick shot videos, but now…she’s got a much bigger audience. If you don’t follow her on Instagram, you’re missing out. She’s got one professional win to her name as a golfer. Here’s some of our favorite photos of Paige Spiranac.
Following a successful junior career, Paige attended San Diego State University where she served as the captain of the women’s golf team in addition to being on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. After she graduated, she knew she had to give professional golf a serious effort.
While she isn’t a consistent player on the LPGA or other professional circuits, she has played in professional golf tournaments and does so somewhat actively. She partners with brands like Callaway, Descente, Topgolf, Golf Digest, and TheCHIVE on media/entertainment projects.
Paige maintains an active blog. She dishes out physical fitness and health tips as well as golf strategy and swing tips. Paige is intensely passionate about doing her part to stop bullying, especially cyberbullying and online hate. She is an official ambassador for The Cybersmile Foundation and often speaks out about her many experiences being bullied throughout her childhood, college, and golf career.
Paige is also an outspoken proponent of women’s empowerment. Encouraging women to be themselves, fight for what they believe, and to embrace their true calling in life is extremely important to Paige. One of the ways that Spiranac empowers women is by hosting events and clinics, supporting other incredible young women, and posting inspirational messages. Paige hopes to help women not only discover the game of golf but to also feel empowered to achieve their wildest dreams.
She’s not afraid of the limelight and having fun in front of millions. From hosting fun golf clinics to partnering with companies like Barstool Sports, Topgolf, and 18Birdies on exciting, innovative events, Paige is always looking for ways to add a little more spice to life. She’s an amateur trick shot artist. Some of her most popular videos on YouTube are from her performing trick shots.
Interesting little bit here, Paige Spiranac is a big fan of comic books. She’s even got some videos of her wearing a Batman outfit while golfing. She was selected to appear in the 2018 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. A huge honor for any athlete or model!
On her YouTube channel, she dishes out weekly videos discussing anything from popular culture to golf tips, or even personal goals in golf for herself. It’s an inspiring and entertaining look into the world around professional golf. Her golf tips range from in-depth, professional lessons where she is aiming to help consistent golfers fine-tune individual parts of their game. It also goes as far back as the introductory basics to golf, designed to be watched by beginners just getting into the game.
Paige Spiranac was born in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Never heard of the last name ‘Spiranac’ before? It’s Croatian. The athletic lineage is obvious. Her father, Dan, was a member of the 1976 Pittsburgh Panthers national championship college football team and her mother, Annette, was a professional ballerina. Her older sister Lexie also received a college athletic scholarship, competing on Stanford’s track team.
After being born in Wheat Ridge, the Sprianac’s moved to Monument, Colorado. That’s where she began her once-promising gymnastics career. How good was she at a young age in gymnastics? Her talent allowed her to skip from level six to Elites, earning an invitation from Karolyi Ranch – the training center for the USA’s Olympic gymnastics feeder system.
She chose golf after gymnastics in part because of her aforementioned bullying issues. The solitary confines of the golf course are what she craved after being ridiculed for a hair condition in her youth. Spiranac split time between Scottsdale, Arizona, and Monument, Colorado, as a home-schooled student so that she would have time to train.
In her early golf career, Spiranac won five tournaments in seven tries on Colorado’s junior golf circuit, including the 2010 CWGA Junior Stroke Play. She earned a spot in the top-20 junior player rankings in the world, a top-5 college recruit, and a two-time West Region Player of the Year and first-team All-American as a member of the Future Collegians World Tour.
Her efforts as a junior earned her a scholarship to the University of Arizona. If you remember correctly, she graduated from San Diego State University…so what happened?
Spiranac only competed in three events for the Arizona Wildcats during the 2011–2012 season including the Windy City Intercollegiate, the PAC-12/SEC Challenge, and the Wildcat Invitational.[8] Her best score of the year was a 73, reached twice during the Windy City Intercollegiate. She decided to leave after her freshman year at Arizona. Spiranac transferred to San Diego State for her sophomore year, seeking a change of environment.
Her sophomore year was a big improvement. In the 2012–2013 season she earned First-Team All-Mountain West honors, a fifth-place finish at the Cal Classic, a sixth at the Mountain West Championship, and nineteenth at the NCAA Central Regional Championships. Following her sophomore year, exciting things were expected for Spiranac and the Aztecs – but it’s hard to top that amazing of a sophomore year. Her 2013–2014 junior season resulted in Second-Team All-Mountain West Honors, along with one top ten finish at the Mountain West Championship.
Her senior season ended with the Aztecs’ first Mountain West Conference Championship in school history, which she described as “one of the absolute happiest moments of my life.” In July 2015 the Colorado Golf Association hosted the 100th Colorado Women’s Golf Association Match Play Championship at Raccoon Creek Golf Course. In a 35-hole title match against Brittany Fan of the University of Colorado Boulder, Spiranac finished nine holes under par to secure the win.
This is how she made the jump into playing professional golf, and being paid to do so. Her senior year, a website by the name of Total Frat Move encouraged fans to check out Spiranac’s trick shot golf videos. Her following went up from 10,000 to over 100,000 in a matter of days.
This explosion in social media led her to being invited to play in the Omega Dubai Ladies Classic in 2015. She missed the cut, but the online attention resulted in many sponsors and endorsement deals, making her a professional golfer. Her 2016 golfing season saw her play on the Cactus Tour, finishing the season with $8,010 in winnings and another invitation to Dubai.
Spiranac competed in the 2016 CoBank Colorado Women’s Open, placing ninth at one-under-par and earning $1,750. By accepting prize money, Spirinac became a professional golfer.
She earned $100 in a golf tournament once. Spiranac debuted on the Cactus Tour at the Las Colinas club in Queen Creek, Arizonatied for 14th place and a prize of only $100 out of the $12,080 purse. It’s interesting to think about earning that little in a professional sports tournament. When you think ‘pro sports’ or ‘amateur sports’ you’re thinking either no prize money, or several thousands of dollars. It’s interesting to think of a small number in between there.
Spiranac currently has signed deals with Mizzen + Main, Philip Stein Watches, 18Birdies, and Cybersmile, and she has been featured in magazines such as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition and Golf Digest. She began writing a monthly column in Golf Magazine. Her golf career is still evolving, but it’s likely you won’t see on a golf tour again. Spiranac says she doesn’t like the competition of pro golf – and would rather have fun by playing and sharing her everyday golf life! Thanks for doing so, Paige.
The LPGA was founded in 1950, and included an original field of only 13 golfers. Compared to the 220 that rotate in and out of the LPGA events today and you see that is quite a growth spurt for the sport. The LPGA is based out of Daytona Beach, Florida and operates tournaments in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Women in golf are experiencing their most profitable years in history – by a long shot. In 2019, total prize money for all LPGA events exceeded $70 million. That’s an increase of $5 million from 2018 and nearly $30 million since 2010.
The leading money-earner in 2019 was Ko Jin-young who earned a hefty $2.7 million dollars thanks to her four tour victories and and multiple top-10 finishes. Compare that to the $14,000 that Babe Zaharias earned in 1950 and you can see how far the sport has traveled in terms of popularity and presence.
Enough about the LPGA – let’s get back to the star of this show: Paige Spiranac. She’s not afraid of the occasional rude social commentator. Once, she received death threats over a comment she made on a podcast when she referred to men who use push carts as weak.
How did she handle those death threats? She turned it into a marketing opportunity! Instead of getting even, she got paid by creating golf-style t-shirts for men on both sides of the push-cart debate. That way, everyone had an option to buy something they aligned with – resulting in plenty of profit for Paige.
“This is impossible, but there is a ball over here,” PGA Champion Chandler Harper said. He was quoted in 1974 after seeing the longest recorded drive in golf history. Kinesiology expert and pro golfer Hoke Austin lays claim to the longest drive ever – a stunning 515 yards – while golfing in the U.S. National Seniors Tournament.
What do sheep and golf have in common? The first 18-hole course in the United States – that’s what. In 1892, Charles Blair, a businessman and golf enthusiast, moved to Downer’s Grove in Illinois and began constructing his very own 18-hole golf course out of a sheep farm. Legend has it that the sheep were the very first grounds crew in U.S. history.
You know that feeling when you pick up a fresh sleeve of balls, and the dimples are perfect and shiny? You have the excitement of knowing you’re about to play golf with a great ball by your side? Well, in the 17th century, golfers had no idea what that feeling is. They used to use golf balls made out of beechwood. That’s right, wooden golf balls!
In between the wooden golf ball and the beauties that are in circulation today, there existed what is known as a feathery. A feathery is a leather pouch stuffed tight with chicken or goose feathers. But this was a fad only for the rich – as one feathery cost the equivalent of $15 today. Imagine paying 15 bucks for a golf ball and then immediately slicing it into the lake! What a nightmare.
There have been two sports played on the moon. One is….you guessed it, golf. Alan Shepard Jr., in 1967, struck a golf ball with a 6 iron while standing on the moon. Legend has it, the golf ball still hasn’t landed and therefore can not be counted as the longest 6-iron ever recorded. Oh, the other sport is javelin by the way.
Who’s counting calories? Well, you can burn some serious calories on the golf course (if you’re walking, that is). A 200-pound golfer can burn up to 450 calories during a typical round of golf. That’s a dessert right there!
Did you know that China has a ban on building new golf courses? It’s not really a rule that people follow, but it’s the law. Land developers get around the issue by conveniently forgetting to include the golf course in plans they submit.
Cadet – not the English word for a military man – but the French word “Cad-Day” means “youngest child”. It’s where the current phrase caddie comes from. Tough to be the youngest, you have to carry everyone else’s clubs! Hey, it builds character, though.
Before the golf tee, there was the sand pile. Long before woodworking and technology forged to create the golf tee (thank goodness), golfers would simply construct little sand piles to hit their ball off of. Sand piles? Think sheep farm, and not Augusta National.
The odds of making a hole-in-one are astronomical. But the odds of making two hole-in-ones during the same round is statistically about a 1 in 67 million chance. That’s crazy. Tiger Woods has 20 in his career. The individual writing this post has a whopping total of 0. Although he did come about 6 inches away from a hole-in-one once.
909 yards. 9 football fields. Three baseball fields. That’s how long the longest hole in the world is. 909 yards! The longest golf hole in the world is the 7th hole of the Sano Course at the Satsuki Golf Club in Japan. Always testing the limits over there in Japan! What a fun hole that must be to play. Par 8?
Did you know that Phil Mickelson was born right-handed. He originally did all things with his right arm as his dominant hand – but his dad was a lefty. And so the most famous left-handed golfer in the world actually shaped his came to mirror his father’s – forcing himself to become a lefty. Now he is known the world over as “Lefty!”
The claim for inventor of golf is unknown for certain, but most agree that the game was invented in Scotland in the 1500s. However there are also heavy claims that the Chinese invented the sport during the Song Dynasty which took place in the 800s.