The ending of Paige Spiranac’s professional golf career still keeps her up at night.
During the latest installment of her “Playing A Round” podcast, the golf influencer — who turned pro for a year after playing at the University of Arizona and San Diego State — recalled feeling broken at the end of her brief pro career.
In search of a “big change,” Spiranac started her golf journey after making the difficult decision to quit gymnastics at the age of 12.
“From the first golf ball I ever hit, I dedicated everything I had to being a pro golfer,” Spiranac said, adding that her father got her into the sport after a flirtation with tennis.
“I was homeschooled. I practiced every single day, morning until night. It was my only goal. I was a highly ranked junior golfer and then at 18 I had to make the decision to go to college or turn pro.”
Spiranac, who turns 30 later this month, said she and her family thought going to college was the best route to get a different experience and play on a team since she had been homeschooled for so long.
“So many growing pains,” she said. “I was burnt out of, I wouldn’t say golf, just dedicating my life to something and not really seeing the results. With gymnastics, it was hard because I was fighting injuries and then with golf — golf is such an interesting sport because you can work out, eat right, practice and still not achieve your goals. That was something for me that I just couldn’t wrap my head around.
“It also went against everything that my parents ever told me because I come from two athletes. They always said, ‘If you put the work in and you dedicate your life to something, you will be successful.’ But that just wasn’t happening with golf and I was driving myself crazy because I felt like I should be achieving at a much higher level. … I had everything to be a world class golfer, but I just couldn’t put it together and I didn’t know why. It was driving me actually insane.
“I just got to the point where I just stopped caring. I wanted to have more of a social life. I wanted to have fun. I was tired of dedicating my life to something and just not seeing the result. So when I was playing at SDSU, I just lost my desire for it.”
During the summer before her last semester at San Diego State, Spiranac decided to continue playing golf and pursue a pro career.
She had planned to practice throughout her last semester while serving as the school’s assistant golf coach.
However, Spiranac’s plans changed when she became a social media sensation
“I was playing really well and then my whole life flipped upside down,” Spiranac said. “I blew up on social media. I didn’t end up going back to be the assistant coach. I didn’t even finish my last semester of college. I never got my degree, which is something that’s so crazy and I’ve never talked about that. I was two credits short of getting my degree.
“… I then got the invite to go play in Dubai. I blew up there. I did one year of playing golf professionally and I was just mentally exhausted. In golf, you fail more than you succeed and I was doing that in the public eye. Everyone was telling me, ‘You should quit. You should give up. You’re not good.’
“All of these things, and I was already dealing with these mental issues of years and years and years of trying so hard and coming up short and I just broke. I honestly cracked. I broke and I just stopped. I said ‘maybe I’ll go back,’ and I’ve never gone back to try and play golf professionally again.
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“It keeps me up at night to be honest because I feel like a failure and it’s really difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that I never made it — not as a gymnast, not as a tennis player, not as a golfer. It’s been hard. It’s really hard because I felt like I could do it and there was just something that was missing.
“But instead of sitting down and feeling sorry for myself, I picked myself back up and threw myself into my media work. My background of just grinding, hard work has really helped me in my media career, because I work so incredibly hard — and the difference is here, the harder I work, the more successful I’ve become and I think that’s why it’s been a more fulfilling journey for me than professional golf… the outcome is positive.”
Spiranac has done pretty well for herself since giving up on her professional playing career.
She has become one of golf’s top influencers with a massive social media following that includes over 3.7 million Instagram followers and 807,000 followers on Twitter.
The Points Bet ambassador also has over 319,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Spiranac — wholanded the cover of the 2022Maxim “Hot 100” issue— works with a number of brands and attends golf events across the United States.
In January, Spiranac launched a subscription-basedcontent site, OnlyPaige.
Although Spiranac said she’s happy with what she’s doing now, she still thinks about a professional career.
“If I had the choice to be doing what I’m doing to play on the LPGA Tour, I would probably pick the LPGA Tour because that was just a goal that I’ve always wanted to achieve and it was a dream of mine — and I wish I could’ve check that off before I went over into doing media work full-time,” Spiranac said. “But that’s not how life works.”
