Paige Spiranac didn’t expect the Internet Invitational to turn into a storm, but the $1 million event saw a fire she never saw coming. What was meant to be a fun and drama-filled show took a dark turn when Spiranac found herself in the middle of a cheating controversy. And the backlash surrounding her cheating allegations grew so vicious that she nearly took legal action to protect herself after receiving “tens of thousands of death threats.”

Spiranac finally broke her silence just a few hours ago via her Instagram after nearly two weeks since the event concluded.

“I haven’t really talked about it because there’s not much to say about the situation, honestly. I am painfully, painfully embarrassed that I did not know this rule…But I would never intentionally cheat. In all of my years of playing golf, I have never been accused of cheating…”

Paige Spiranac, however, did admit that she wished that someone had actually come up to her during the time and told her that it was against the rules. “I wish that instead of everyone talking to everyone else except for me, I wish that someone came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I think that’s against the rules.’ 
I then would have had the opportunity to own it and say I’m sorry, and then gone up to Brad Francis and Beef myself and told him what had happened from my perspective…”

It would have died then and there and would have saved her from receiving the multiple death threats and vile abuses she received online following the incident. Even though her team lost the match, Spiranac admitted that “she was subjected to an unprecedented amount of hate” and received “tens of thousands of death threats” and “DMs that were vile to the point where she explored the option of resorting to a restraining order,” according to the New York Post.

The scandal erupted during the final round of the event, on the ninth hole, where Spiranac teamed with Malosi Togisala and Frankie Borrelli. Spiranac was accused of improving Togisala’s lie by pushing thick grass down surrounding his ball. “I went to identify the golf ball, when I did, I pushed some grass to the side, and then, a couple of feet back, I pushed some grass aside…” Spiranac admitted on Instagram.

Earlier, when the allegations had just come to light, during the event, Spiranac admitted that she thought the rules allowed players to do that. “I thought you could do that…I didn’t realize you couldn’t do that…” she said when she grew emotional over the claims and started crying.

But when she finally learnt of the rule that high grass wasn’t a “loose impediment,” Spiranac admitted that it’s something she would never do again. “There were so many cameras on me, so many people around me. 
I mean, to blatantly cheat with that many people around that many cameras around would be insane. So I made a mistake. I learned now it was a rules infraction and I’ll never do it again.”

Unfortunately for Paige Spiranac and her team, her partner, Malosi Togisala, was also involved in a controversy of his own, adding even more fuel to an already blazing fire.

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Paige Spiranac’s partner was also under the heat

While Paige Spiranac was fighting off accusations of her own, her teammate Malosi Togisala found himself entangled in a separate controversy. Whispers spread quickly that he’d been using the slope function on his rangefinder, a feature that factors elevation changes into distance. It’s typically not allowed in any official events, and even Dave Portnoy had explicitly banned it before the opening round.

Togisala had already been accused of the same thing in the previous round, and although he denied it both times, footage from a cart showed him fidgeting with the device just moments before Portnoy approached. When confronted, he insisted, “Hand to God, I was not using the slope. I swear.”

But many influencers watching the footage felt the evidence looked a little too suspicious, and the skepticism only intensified when Togisala chose not to address the drama on his social media after the episode aired.

Paige Spiranac later explained that all this, the controversies, were part of the tension that came from the nature of the show itself. “It’s essentially a golf reality show mixed with Survivor, and it’s supposed to be drama-filled and entertaining… The difference is that as a player, we have no context. 
We have no idea what’s really going on because we’re locked in,” she said.

In the end, Spiranac saw these incidents as part of the high-pressure, drama-filled environment the show was designed to create.