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Golf influencer Paige Spiranac paid homage to LPGA legend Jan Stephenson on Tuesday in an advertisement for LA Golf.
Spiranac posed seemingly nude in a bathtub filled with golf balls. She captioned the photo posted to Twitter with a simple, two-word question: “Got balls?”
“Took inspiration from the legend herself!” Spiranac added, via TMZ Sports. “We are working on something special to honor her. I love to recreate images from women who have inspired me and also give credit where it is due. Jan is the OG.”
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Stephenson, an Australia native, famously posed seemingly nude in a tub filled with golf balls in the 1980s. She was a 16-time winner on the LPGA Tour and won the Women’s PGA Championship, U.S. Women’s Open and du Maurier Classic. She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2019.
She was known as a sex symbol on the golf course and made clear that the description didn’t always sit well with her, according to news.au.com.
Paige Spiranac participates in the Berenberg Invitational on Oct. 4, 2021, in Bedford Hills, New York. (Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Berenberg Invitational)
“I’ve always thought it was a compliment (to be considered a glamour girl), but an undeserved one,” she said after winning the U.S. Open in 1983. “There are a lot of pretty girls on the tour and I keep expecting people to say something about them. But you have to win, too.
“I don’t really feel as if I’m a glamour girl or a sex symbol because the most important thing to me is golf.… But, sure, I still care about how I look.”
Spiranac may not have had the same success in professional golf as Stephenson but she is still blazing her own path on social media and impacting the game in a different way.
In March, she revealed why she didn’t pursue a pro golf career after having success at San Diego State.
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“I just got to the point where I just stopped caring,” she said. “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.”
Jan Stephenson in action during tournament play circa 1983. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
Jan Stephenson plays during a tournament circa 1977. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
She was set to become SDSU’s assistant golf coach, but she suddenly 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.”
She noted that things really took a turn when she traveled to Dubai to play.
“… 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.”
Paige Spiranac presents for Points Bet during Melbourne Racing at Flemington Racecourse on March 11, 2023, in Australia. (Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images)
She currently works with several brands and attends events as a golf influencer. Spiranac said she is content with her current career, but if she had the choice, she would pick playing competitively over influencing.
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“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 checked that off before I went over into doing media work full time,” Spiranac said. “But that’s not how life works.”
Fox News’ Chantz Martin contributed to this report.
