Paige Spiranac has 4M Instagram followers. She’s one of golf’s prominent influencers. Yet she says she feels profoundly misunderstood. In her latest YouTube video, Spiranac opened up about the gap between who people think she is and who she actually is.

“I have a very polarizing personality and brand online, and I often feel very misunderstood,” Spiranac explained to her 466,000 YouTube subscribers in the recent Q&A video to kick off 2026.

She noted that the person people assume her to be is vastly different from who she actually is. This misconception about her fueled what she called a deep-burning desire to defend herself and overexplain her true nature at every turn.

However, defending herself only triggered accusations that she was playing the victim. The cycle repeated endlessly. Facts didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter.

“And what happens is that then people say, ‘Oh, you’re just playing the victim again.’ And so when they say that, I then defend myself again and before you know it, it’s just this vicious cycle,” she added while talking about the matter.

Spiranac complained that people were always stuck with their biases about her. And it affected her deeply. Previously, she was linked to golfer Bryson DeChambeau after they collaborated on YouTube, and even to NFL legend Tom Brady. Spiranac was infuriated and strongly rebuffed the false rumor at that time.

“It’s funny because I’ll see all these headlines,” Spiranac stated as reported by Yahoo Sports in April 2025. “There was one where I shot content with Bryson, and then a headline said I was dating him. Tom Brady was one of them, which was so crazy.”

The recurring rumor exhausted her.

“Another misconception. That I date all these professional athletes. Um, never actually have been on a date with anyone famous,” the 32-year-old influencer told Outkick in 2025.

In the recent video, Paige Spiranac said she has come to terms with the fact that she would be willfully misunderstood by some.

“The people who dislike me will always dislike me,” she concluded about the sad reality. “They will always think that I am that person, no matter what.”

Interestingly, Spiranac also explained that the wrong perception could be because fans only see one side of her life. The other, more private side, is only known to people who are close to her.  However, she also hinted at her plans of changing that in 2026.

“I need to do a better [job] of showing different aspects of myself because, of course, I know who I am, the people in my life who’ve spent so much time with me know the person that I am […] but when you’re doing a slow motion, ten second video of your golf swing on Instagram, people aren’t gonna know who you are.”

But there is still doubt whether that will work in her favor. That’s because in 2025, she got death threats for a trivial matter.

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Paige Spiranac received death threats for a mistake

During the Internet Invitational, a tournament of golf influencers with a $1 million prize pool, Spiranac was accused of improving her lie in tall grass, a rules violation that unleashed tens of thousands of death threats. She considered filing for a restraining order.

The alleged cheating scandal unfolded when her opposition team noticed that she was stomping on the grass near her ball. Spiranac, when confronted, accepted the mistake but said she wasn’t aware it would be considered a rules infraction. She was in tears while defending herself.

When the video emerged on social media, fans were quick to judge her. Spiranac was dubbed a cheater, and death threats followed in DMs and social media comments.

“The last week and a half is probably the worst hate I’ve ever received in the 10 years of me doing this,” she said in her January video.

A similar pattern continued in December. Spiranac, a self-admitted Pittsburgh Steelers fan, posted two pictures. In one, she was wearing a Steelers jersey, and in another, she wore a Detroit Lions jersey, captioning “But I do also like the Lions…”. The tweet, posted before the Detroit Lions vs. Pittsburgh Steelers match, caused a furor.

Some accused her of bandwagon fandom for donning both teams’ jerseys. Same script, different day: public judgment, rushed conclusions, and Spiranac left explaining herself to an audience that had already decided who she was. Interestingly, she tweeted another picture more recently, writing, “Feel free to photoshop my outfit to fit your favorite team. I don’t want anyone hating me.”

Now, she’s done explaining. Entering 2026, Spiranac has shifted her focus more toward content creation than defending who she isn’t. And she’s already started.