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Recently on her Playing A Round With Paige Renee podcast, Paige Spiranac voiced her displeasure with the golf establishment over what she perceives to be hypocrisy in how she has been treated.
“Golf is elitist, it’s stuffy, it’s exclusive and I hate that because I am not that and I was never welcomed in and I’m still not welcomed in,” Spiranac complained.
“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.
“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,” said the 26-year-old.
“It’s an act. I feel like everyone in golf is just playing this part of this perfect golfer when in reality it’s nothing like that,” Spiranac added.
“They call it a gentleman’s game but those guys definitely don’t act like gentlemen a lot of the time. There’s just so much hypocrisy in golf and it’s so frustrating for me. It’s this big boys club where if someone does something they’ll cover that up … but I wear a tank top and I’m the slut and I’m the whore and I’m the one that’s ruining the game. I’m not going to feel like I fit in when everything that I do, I’m an outcast.”
Spiranac then shared an example of how she believes she has been mistreated.
“I wanted to help this charity out and I wanted to give them free golf clubs,” she explained. “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 fucking 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 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.”
Welp, it appears that some of those “elitists” didn’t like what Spiranac had to say and criticized her for her comments. She fired right back.
In episode 4 of my podcast I vented about the golf industry and I’m getting a lot of heat for it which I expected. Not surprisingly guys are calling me a whore and saying I need to show less cleavage (ew boring) but also that if I was a better golfer then I’d be respected.
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) March 9, 2020
Which doesn’t make sense to me. I’d still be the same person if I was winning on tour or doing media like I am now. Nothing would be different. I would still dress and act exactly the same.
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) March 9, 2020
So I have a question, why are we more lenient towards someone or view them differently if they are very successful in their field of work? Does being a winner hold more weight than being a good person?
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) March 9, 2020
I also want to make it clear I’m not saying poor me or playing the victim. I know I’m going to get hate for what I wear and speaking out. I’m just facing it head on now instead of worrying about being accepted. I will never change myself so I can fit in.
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) March 9, 2020
Back in 2018, Spiranac made similar statements to The Guardian, “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. 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.”
She also recently admitted on her podcast that she was very traumatized by a naked photo of her that leaked online and how her appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2018 helped her overcome it.
“I was nude, I was completely naked. That was the best moment for me,” Spiranac shared. “I felt so empowered and I was like, ‘OK, if I’m going to do this, I’m doing it on my terms’ and I took it back, I took my body back. That was the moment I won, right there, when I did Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and I had my tits out.”