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OMEGA DUBAI LADIES MASTERSDecember 7, 2015Paige SpiranacDubai, United Arab Emirates BETHAN CUTLER: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome Paige Spiranac to the OMEGA Dubai Ladies Masters for your first visit, welcome. PAIGE SPIRANAC: Thank you. BETHAN CUTLER: We know that you're a social media celebrity with 50,000 followers on Twitter and almost half a million on Instagram. How important is it for players to get involved in social media these days in your opinion? PAIGE SPIRANAC: I think it's very important. It's a way to connect with everyone and you kind of can they can keep up with you and you kind of document what you're doing, and I think that's great because you get to interact with so many different people now. BETHAN CUTLER: So how about your game, is it trending in the right direction? PAIGE SPIRANAC: I would like to think so. I've been working really hard and I'm just really excited for this opportunity, really grateful for it. BETHAN CUTLER: Do you have any goals in mind for the tournament? PAIGE SPIRANAC: To not throw up on the first tee is No. 1 (laughing). I'm extremely nervous. It's my first big tournament and first time I've been here and first time out of the country, so it's kind of a lot. Just trying to keep everything like calm and collected and seem like I'm keeping it together. I think that's the main goal right now. Q. How do you keep it together? How has the experience been travelling and coming over here and seeing the place, and how do you think will you manage to keep the nerves at bay come Wednesday? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Traveling is great because I've been with my older sister, so she's been able to keep everything keep me okay. And I don't really know how I'm going to handle it. This is my first time in the situation, but I played college golf and I played junior golf. I've been in pressure situations before, but this is obviously on a bigger scale. So hopefully I can keep it together and do what I'm capable of doing. Q. You majored in communications, and your way of communicating is just I think perfect. Can you tell us how we know that your involvement with the social media helped you get an entry in this tournament. Can you just tell me how much of a useful tool it as been in your short career so far? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be here without it. So it's very important, and like I said, I'm very grateful to be here because of the social media. But it's really weird how it came about, because I never really sought this out. It kind of just came to me. So it's been a learning process of like dealing with everything and receiving negative comments and also the positive comments and how to balance those two. So it's been a learning process, but I'm very fortunate that I have all these followers and they do like watching me and liking what I do. So I think that's really cool, and it's given me like a gateway to help my professional golf career, and that's really what I want to do is just play golf because I love it so much. So I'm happy that Instagram has kind of given me that opportunity. Q. Are you a little annoyed at times maybe in these last few months that people tend to focus more you are a great golfer, whatever we have seen on the Internet looks like you have the stuff to really succeed at this level. But people just keep focusing on the social media aspect and stuff like that, instead of your golf. Does it get annoying or are you just happy with it? PAIGE SPIRANAC: I understand where they are coming from. I mean, I haven't yes, I played golf and I've had good results, but when you look at my game compared to, you know, say the top players in the world, I'm not in the same league as them. They do have a right to say that, yeah, she's not on Tour, because I'm not on Tour. I just turned pro and this is all new. I understand where they are coming from, but I wish they could see that I'm working as hard as I can. I may make it and I may not make it. I'm just trying to focus on what I need to do to get to that next level and try not to focus on what they say too much and try to focus on all the positive. I'm pretty lucky in the sense that on social media, anyone has the ability to say whatever they want and most of the time, it is negative to a lot of people. So I get probably 99 percent amazing comments and so much love and support of people, so that one percent of people that tend to criticise, I can't help that, but I do understand where they are coming from. Q. Does it help you in your golf, as well? Like for example, if you hit a bad shot, do you think of it like it's a bad comment and you forget about it? Does it help you on the golf course? PAIGE SPIRANAC: The social media? Q. The social media skills. PAIGE SPIRANAC: I would say yes and no. If I hit a bad shot and say there's people around, I don't want to, you know, throw my club or be negative because that's not what I want to portray myself and that's not what I'm like on social media. I feel like I try to be very genuine and very fun loving, so I try to bring that side of it to the golf course, and I think that helps me. Q. We know you've been out and practiced already, and it's a course that's very famous, Rory won earlier in the year and Tiger and all these guys have played here. Wonder your thoughts on the course itself and if you're going to attack it and if it suits you and you like the look of it? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yeah, I played it yesterday. I love it. It's in amazing shape. It's beautiful. You get on like 8 or 14, you see the buildings in the back and you're just like, this is amazing, like I can't even believe I'm here. I do believe it fits my game pretty well because you can kind of hit it a little bit in places and still be fine, and I like that, because I feel like my short game is probably the best part of my game and the putting, and I feel like you can make a lot of putts here. So I like that part of it. Q. And also, as well, you're going to be nervous on the first tee and there's going to be a lot of spectators curious to come and watch you. How are you going to handle that for the week ahead? Some are you going to be looking at you and wondering, is she as good it's going to be a strange situation for you, isn't it? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yeah, like I said, I'm extremely nervous and I'm going to be 100 per cent honest with that. I can't hide the fact that this is my first big event and I don't know how I'm going to handle it, and I've never had people a lot of people come out and watch me. So it's going to be new for me. I want to prove myself, because I have been working really hard. Depending on what I shoot, it's going to be basically if I can keep myself my mind straight and my nerves under control and the hands not shaking too much. Q. Just want to follow that up, as well. What stage are you in at the career with getting your cards? PAIGE SPIRANAC: So I turned pro in August. When I finished college golf, I wasn't sure if I wanted to play professionally or not. I kind of had a hard college career and so I didn't sign up for first stage of Q School because I was kind of in between. And then kind of all the social media attention started to happen, and it kind of I guess forced me to turn pro a little sooner than how I had it planned out to begin with. This is my first tournament and from here I'll play the first stage of Q School when it comes up again and go through the process. I definitely want to earn my way on and do it way on, because I need more experience and more rounds under my belt before I do anything else. Q. I know you said a little about it, but what would constitute a good week for you in terms of a debut? What targets do you want to tick off other than not being sick on the first tee? PAIGE SPIRANAC: That's No. 1 right now. All my friends are like putting friends on like if I actually will or not (laughing). But I just want to stay in the moment. I don't want to get ahead of myself. Like I said, I've been working really hard and I know my game is good and it's there now. I just want to be able to kind of let everything else go and kind of do what my game is able to do and hopefully I can perform that way. So it's more not really performance based. It's more keeping everything under control for me. Q. And it sounds like your dad used to play for Pittsburgh. Has he given you any advice? He's a former athlete himself. Has he given you any advice on the nerves? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yeah, everybody has been really helpful. A lot of my friends who play professionally, golf, too, are just saying go out there and try your best and have fun. You have bad rounds and you have good rounds, too, and if I do happen to have a bad round, it's just one bad round and you can move on from it. Try not to let it affect you too much. Q. Can I ask you about your obsession for comic books? That's what we've read in the ladies interviews. Who is your favourite character, and if you want to be a comic book character, who would that character be? PAIGE SPIRANAC: For DC Comics, it's definitely Batman. And then for Marvel, it is Ironman. I love comics. It's something that I do on the weekends. I'll just go to comic bookstores and just read them. I've always been into it. If I could be anyone, I don't know, I wish I could do something that would relate to golf, like make every putt that I looked at or something like that. But it would be pretty cool to like be Ironman and just have like a suit and like fly around everywhere and just never be in traffic and do whatever I wanted. Q. I must have read the same article. They were talking about gymnastics was going to be your career. PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yes. Q. And then you had an injury, a rare injury young, and then your dad took you to the golf range and you hit one shot and you thought, this is for me now. Is that kind of how it was? PAIGE SPIRANAC: So when I was younger, I was always on the monkey bars during school and my teachers went to my mom and were like, you need to get her into the gym because she's going to break her neck. Gymnastics was my everything. I started when I was six. I was an elite gymnast by the age of ten. I was in the gym seven hours a day, six days a week. Really wanted to go to the Olympics but I had a bad birthday, which means that you kind of peak when you're 15, 16. And I would have been you have to be turning 16 in the year of the Olympics. And I have a March birthday, so I miss it. So I would have been 18 which is kind of passed it. But the main reason I quit is I fractured my kneecap twice. I was pretty young, so my bones were strong enough. So when I was going to jump backwards on the vault, a piece of the bone ripped the muscle, and that actually happened twice. So after the second time, I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, like I'm done. It was too much for me. I quit when I was 12 and I picked up golf right after that. Q. Is that injury something that concerns you for your golf career? PAIGE SPIRANAC: No, it doesn't bother me at all. It healed. I was actually really fortunate because a lot of gymnasts do have pretty bad injure s and I was lucky it was just that and it wasn't anything with my back or neck or anything along those lines. It doesn't concern me now though. Q. When the focus did switch to golf, who do you look up to on the men's circuit and the women's? Who have you tried to take little tips or advice when you see them on TV? PAIGE SPIRANAC: I've always loved Juli Inkster. She threw me a golf ball at a tournament when I was young. She's so competitive but she makes it fun still and she works so hard. And also Tiger Woods, too. He's just so cool in the sense that like everything he does, he just looks so cool doing it. He's a legend and then also the older players, too, watching how they work and how their short games so I love like short game, that's my favourite part. So seeing how they work around the greens and everything like that, so it's pretty cool. Q. How has the short game been this week? PAIGE SPIRANAC: It's been good. I think that's the strongest part of my game. I always rely on that because when I do get nervous, I tend to go a little bit both ways. I do rely on that a lot, so hopefully it's strong on Wednesday and Thursday. Q. Can I ask you something about, I know you have good things to say about Mohamed and his team, but to be invited to a tournament like this at a career stage where you are, what are your own thoughts about that, and also your experience of Dubai for the first couple of days that you have been here, what do you think of the city and what have you heard about the city before that you thought is different now that you have seen it? PAIGE SPIRANAC: Yeah, like I said, I'm very fortunate to be here right now. I'm so blessed and so lucky and I honestly I can't believe that I am here. I remember when it first started to happen, I got a call and they said they wanted me to come to Dubai. July I think is when I got the first call. I was crying in my room because I was nervous and I didn't know I would be ready, and I'm still crying in my room and not sure if I'm ready. But to be in Dubai, I was pretty nervous to come here because it was my first time out of the country and I didn't know what to expect. I've never travelled and it's 15 hours away from where I am. It's been incredible. Someone told me that Dubai is a mix between Vegas and Disney World. It's way cooler than that. It's amazing. Every time I'm just blown away by like the buildings and how nice the people are here and just the hospitality. Everyone's welcomed me with open arms, so it's been great and I couldn't have asked for a better place to come for my first tournament. BETHAN CUTLER: Thank you so much for your time and good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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