WHEAT RIDGE, COLORADO: Paige Spiranac recently appeared on the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show (UCSS) from the Kaulig Companies Championship. During the show, she revealed how she became the "first golf influencer" in the entire world.
Spiranac is one of the most popular influencers on Instagram with over 3 million followers. The golfing beauty, who is among Maxim's 'Sexiest Women Alive', has long been on Maxim's radar, and she now sits atop the magazine's Hot 100 list, making her the first athlete to do so.
'I was the first to be a golf influencer'
During her interview session on UCSS, Spiranac said that she is the most followed golfer. She said, "if you go off the data, yes, I have the most followers." Revealing how the journey started, she added, "Someone found my pictures online, wrote an article about it, and then I went from having 500 followers to 100,000 followers overnight."
She further added, "And at that point, this was, you know, eight years ago. No one was really utilizing social media through sports. It was getting a little bit more attention through fashion and beauty and... but sports was way behind and so I was one of the well, not one of, I was the first to be a golf influencer."
'I didn't have any financial backing to play professionally'
Spiranac further disclosed how she got into golf despite having no financial support. "I don't come from a golf family but my dad enjoyed golf here and there and so he took me out and fell in love with it after the first golf ball I hit," she said.
The golf influencer continued, "And had a really great Junior Golf career, had a full ride scholarship to play golf at San Diego State University, played decent there. And then was going back and forth on what I wanted to do because I didn't have any financial backing to play golf professionally and kind of struggling at that point."
"So I was caddying and I was running Junior Golf clinics and my dad just said let's just give it one year, one shot. And before that happened, I blew up on social media. It was totally an accident," she concluded.