Jeff Lange / USA TODAY NETWORK
Paige Spiranac was among the golf influencers who were tapped for the inaugural edition of the tournament dubbed the “Internet Invitational.” She found herself dogged by cheating allegations during a round where there was $1 million on the line, and she reemerged from an online hiatus to address what went down while discussing the fallout.
There’s no shortage of golfers who’ve attempted to leverage their skills to amass a sizeable following online, and some of the biggest names in that particular space were invited to compete in the Internet Invitational at Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri earlier this year.
The field, which featured a grand total of 48 competitors, boasted a significant number of personalities who are affiliated with Barstool and Bob Does Sports (the two companies that joined forces to organize the event). However, it also featured some golf influencers who largely built their own brand, including Paige Spiranac, an O.G. who’s spent close to a decade amassing over four million followers on Instagram.
Spiranac played college golf at South Carolina and San Diego State and made a short-lived effort to turn pro before pivoting to a career as a content creator. It was only natural that she was asked to participate in the Internet Invitational, although she ended up in an unenviable situation after being accused of a rules violation during the final round.
Paige Spiranac broke her silence on the cheating accusations at the Internet Invitational and the blowback she received
The final round of the Internet Invitational featured two trios going head-to-head in an alternate shot match. Spiranac was teamed up with Good Good’s Malosi Togisala and Barstool’s Frankie Borrelli, who were facing off against another Brad Dalke of Good Good and Barstool’s Francis Ellis and Cody “Beef” Franke.
That first threesome found itself subjected to multiple cheating allegations over the course of the match. Togisala was called out for using a range finder with the slope function turned on (a charge he denied at the time and after the competition), while Spiranac caught heat for seemingly trying to improve his lie after a shot ended up in the long grass.
There seems to be a rules discrepancy over this lie at the @InternetInvite pic.twitter.com/Okfe2d7Sti
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) November 14, 2025
Those issues ended up being a non-factor in the grand scheme of things when you consider Spiranac’s team ended up losing, and while she defended her honor on the course, she admitted she screwed up while addressing what transpired for the first time during a Q&A session on her Instagram Story.
🚨👱🏻♀️🌾 #NEW: Paige Spiranac addresses the alleged cheating scandal at the Internet Invitational: “I would never intentionally cheat, in all of my years playing golf I have never been accused of cheating.”@PaigeSpiranac says she’s received more than 10K threats on her life. pic.twitter.com/QGp40tImfx
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) November 25, 2025
Spiranac admitted she was unaware of the rule that bars golfers from purposefully messing with grass that could interfere with their swing, adding she was “painfully, painfully embarrassed” by her ignorance and bluntly stating “I made a mistake.”
She also noted she was subjected to an unprecedented amount of hate due to what was a fairly overblown “scandal,” saying she was subjected to “tens of thousands of death threats” and received DMs that were “vile” to the point where she explored the option of resorting to a restraining order.
It goes without saying that it is insane that she had to deal with that kind of harassment over what seemed like a fairly honest mistake, but that’s sadly just the world we live in.
