Paige Spiranac and Tisha Alyn are golfers who grew up competing in the same junior events, made it through the same qualifying school, and exited the professional golf world on the same day. Over a decade later, they met again in California to host a new episode of Spiranac’s popular YouTube series, “Hot Birds.”
The old friends played Monarch Beach Golf Links in a scramble format from the forward tees, shooting 8 under par on the show. In the end, they scored 5 under, but the real highlight of the episode was the talk that ranged from Alyn’s relationship and coming out to the apparel brand she created from scratch.
“I have known this girl for, to avoid aging us, probably over a decade now,” Spiranac said. “We have played junior golf together, college golf together, we played a little bit of pro golf together, and we started doing the social media thing around the same time.”
According to Alyn, she learned golf at 3 years old from her father. She was a top junior golfer in Illinois, moved to California as a teenager and earned a full scholarship to play college golf.
“Literally, there isn’t a memory I have where I wasn’t a golfer,” Alyn said.
Both women became professionals, competed on the Cactus Tour, in state opens, and in the qualifying school. According to Alyn, she felt that it was her responsibility to give it a shot.
“Golf is such a love-hate relationship, so it was kind of like, I have to try,” she said. “We’ve been doing this for so long. I have to try.”
Spiranac recalled the summer when their professional careers ended. “We had just come off Q school, and Q school is literal hell,” she said. “You’re playing in Palm Springs in August. It’s hot. There’s so much pressure.”
The women remembered the summer heat of 125 degrees, when they were “fighting for our card”. During the Colorado Open soon after, after the first round, they sat on a picnic table, looked at each other, and realized that they could not sustain this way of life anymore.
Social media was hardly a safe landing spot. Brands weren’t ready to pay for the influence, and the women said the idea was considered “kind of a joke within the golf industry” at that time, especially for a pair of women.
Before making the leap into social media, Alyn took a break and tried to compete in pageants, specifically Miss Philippines USA, on her mother’s advice.
“Pageantry is a really big deal in Filipino culture. I’m full Filipino,” Alyn explained. “Mom said, ‘You should try this at least once in your life.”
She won the people’s choice award, but remembers it as one of the hardest things she ever did. “You’re just trotting around in six-inch heels, and you have to hold this pose,” she said. “Girls were faltering, like passing out.”
For the talent segment, she danced. “I couldn’t golf on the stage,” Alyn recalled. “What do I do, just bounce a ball?”
Her decision was final: “No more pageants. Absolutely not.”
Alyn was also a member of Women with Drive, one of the first female golf content collectives, years before similar groups emerged. “If we’d kept it going, we would have been popping,” she said.
On the golf course, the ladies birdied the first three holes. Before a long birdie putt on the third hole, they made a pact: “If we make it, we’re running into the ocean.”
The putt went in, and the ladies ran towards the water, but a huge hill and bushes stopped them on the way. “Holy [expletive],” one of the ladies exclaimed.
“We can’t get down there. We tried,” Spiranac said to the viewers. “It’s a pretty steep hill.”
Spiranac admitted one of the issues of her “Hot Birds” show. “I have the shanks, apparently. They come and go on this channel,” she said. “I never shank it in real life, but every time I’ve filmed, I shank it.”
Alyn joked that the viewers should “keep expectations very low” since she rarely plays these days, but said that she still enjoys the game off camera.
“I mean, yes and no,” she added. “I do enjoy it when I’m playing, and it’s honestly not for the camera. … This is our office, right? So we come to the course and you think, well, I might as well film something. … Then suddenly it becomes a task.”
Nevertheless, she still loves teaching and showing the sport to newbies, though she admitted that her short game deteriorated. “When I was playing a lot, these were the shots I felt most comfortable with,” she said. “But they were the first to disappear when you’re not playing consistently.”
Alyn has seven holes-in-one compared to four by Spiranac. Her favorite one was made at the 100-hole hike that benefitted Youth on Course, 68-yard shot that she still counts “because it was a full swing for me”.
“It was cool to do it in front of the kids,” she said. “We were screaming. We sprinted through the hole.”
She didn’t think about anything except making sure she didn’t sprain her ankle like Tony did while celebrating his ace at the 2018 Masters Par 3 Contest. Her longest ace came from 192 yards. “That’s such a legit shot for us,” she added.
Spiranac said that Alyn is one of the best iron players that she has ever played with. Alyn explained it was out of necessity.
“That’s because I hated short games, so I had to hit 16 greens or else I wouldn’t be on tour,” she said. “I think it’s really about how you compress the ball. … If you compress the ball, I feel like you can control your shot a lot better. People who sweep an iron? No control.”
“Hi, I’m Paige, and I sweep iron shots,” Spiranac joked.
Also, Spiranac shared her most embarrassing experience on the golf course. During a junior tournament in Tucson, Arizona, at 14, she stepped over a rope after her mother was standing on it. The rope sprung up, caught her back foot, and made her fall down with her bag on her back.
“You heard my clubs clank,” Spiranac said. “All of these hot junior boy golfers looked back at me. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”
However, the same round gave her another story to share: “Then, dressed all in white, I tried to hit a ball out of the water and just got sprayed.” When Alyn said she had nothing that could beat it, Spiranac deadpanned: “Awesome. Glad I shared that.”
Midway through the round, Spiranac decided to ask a question everyone wanted answered: Alyn’s relationship status.
“It’s actually so weird to say it, that I’m taken,” Alyn said. “She is literally the most stunning human on earth. I’m just so glad that she’s gay.”
She described her partner as “stunning, beautiful, gorgeous, younger than me,” then chuckled to herself: “That’s probably where I [expletive] up,” she admitted. “I wasn’t looking younger than me.”
Spiranac noticed that Alyn possesses “a very dominant personality” and likes “taking control in all aspects of your life.”
Alyn agreed with that. “I identify very much as a dom fem, which in the gay community is exactly what it sounds like,” she said. “I am very dominant, but I present very feminine, and I happen to find someone who is also quite like that as well.”
“She’s so established. She has a really good head on her shoulders,” Alyn added. “I can’t wait for everyone to meet her. … I’m so proud to be her partner.”
Alyn’s previous relationship was public, and she said she wants to be more careful this time.
“I do want to be more private and a lot more meticulous about how I go about this relationship because I want to protect it,” she said. “My last one was very public, and public is just not a safe place.”
She noted that her engagement video is “still viral somewhere in the universe, and I can’t control it.”
However, she admitted that it matters too much to her to remain completely private.
“For me, representation is so big,” Alyn said. “I get so many messages daily, like, because you have shown love and that representation matters, it actually gives me the will to live. … It’s so far more than golf.”
“I love very loudly,” she said. “I still think it would probably organically come out at some point, and I think that just people seeing that it exists really does help.”
Later, when asked to name her proudest achievement outside golf, she didn’t think twice: “Coming out, hands down,” Alyn said. “That was definitely my proudest moment.”
Women regularly tell her that she saved their lives. “I’m like, oh my god, the responsibility,” she said. “I need to take care of all the baby gays.”
Her favorite video is the joke on her TikTok platform, aimed at friends who come out as bisexuals. It brought in roughly 11 million views, one of the highest numbers for her videos that aren’t trick shots.
“I have never been hit on so many times,” Alyn said. “And they were all moms.”
“If you’re bi or bicurious, I’m like, holla at your girl,” she said. “It was a joke.”
Currently, Alyn runs Alyn Golf, a women’s golf apparel line whose name is pronounced “all in”.
“I chose the path of the hardest climb,” she said. “I told myself, life isn’t supposed to be easy. So I started a women’s golf apparel line.”
It’s called Alyn Golf. “Obviously, I’m all in,” she added. “And that’s my name, Tisha Alyn.”
She said that she finds it the most satisfying to see strangers wearing her clothes. “There’s no more fulfilling feeling for me than seeing another woman out in the wild wearing it,” Alyn said. “I could land the biggest deal in the world, or I could see someone in my stuff, and it hits me—it’s a different level of wow, they really believe in it, and it means everything to me.”
Running a business humbles her.
“Entrepreneurship is not for the weak, folks. It is really, really hard,” she said. “You’d think, oh, my name carries some weight. I’ve had some success in this field. No, I’m starting from scratch. Life is brutal from here on.”
According to her, retailers were not excited about her brand. “You’d think you could walk into all the stores. No, they don’t care.”
She sees her apparel brand as the next step for creators of her generation. “We have to figure out that next step,” she said. “And for me, I feel like this is it.”
The brand is selling directly to consumers on alyngolf.com, with a new colorway arriving this fall. Alyn wore an unreleased, still-unnamed dress during the round, and the ladies joked it could become “the Paige dress.”
Spiranac, for her part, wore G/FORE shoes and a G/FORE glove, an Alo skirt, an Urban Outfitters top, Warby Parker sunglasses, and a London Jewelers necklace.
On a par 5, sponsor London Jewelers gave an eagle challenge: $1,000 plus jewelry of the player’s choosing for an eagle. Alyn said that the prize would go to her girlfriend. “I’m the one who treats her,” she said.
“Take notes,” Spiranac said.
According to Alyn, her straight friends complain that their boyfriends or husbands do “the bare minimum. Bare minimum.”
“I’ve already gotten 300 roses, okay? I’ve already built a teepee in the sand,” she said. “I’m very chivalrous; I’m always opening doors. I’m always paying for meals. I’m always keeping them safe. I bring a jacket when they’re cold. I always bring a blanket as well.”
“Yeah, guys, take that,” Spiranac said.
Spiranac made the eagle putt, making any rebound impossible. “Oh my god, I hit that so badly,” she said. “I’ve never struck a worse putt in my whole life.” They tapped in for birdie, dropping to 4 under.
Spiranac also pushed the idea of golf being more welcoming and inclusive, saying that “the sport can be a bit exclusive and stuffy and conservative.” She asked Alyn what fans can do to help women in the game.
At the elite level, Alyn suggested watching LPGA. “We love our girls. You have to tune in. You’ve got to watch,” she said. “I feel like they’re doing a better job broadcasting more, with better hours and a touch more personality on social media. Show them some love.”
At the grassroots level, Alyn stressed: “Introduce your girlfriends to the game, right? We’ve seen so much growth in women’s golf, and we just need to keep pushing for diversity, different faces, different backgrounds, and grow from there.”
Alyn’s biggest pet peeve in golf is men in white pants. “If you’re going to rock the white pants, you’d better be like Camilo Villegas,” she said. “Like, you’d better be hot with it.”
Also, she complained about unfilled divots and being passed by players when playing from forward tees. “I’m like, absolutely not,” she said. “You’re dead to me now.”
During the final round, Alyn answered a lightning-round question about her favorite color (red), her height (5 feet 5 inches), and her lowest round (65). Her favorite golf course is Pebble Beach, which she had just played, and she said that she would like to play Augusta someday.
Her top golf accomplishment is the first professional win, a mini-tour event in which she shot 11 under over three rounds. “Even though it’s a mini-tour event, the pressure was so high, I still felt it,” she recalled.
Asked to name a favorite golf creator aside from Spiranac, she mentioned the new face in the game. “I actually just met Marissa recently from Good Good Girls, and I didn’t know what to expect,” Alyn said. Sometimes, younger creators can “come off a little entitled,” but she and Marissa found out that “she is kind and she hits it so far.” “It’s actually insane,” Alyn said.
As the round approached its end, Spiranac thanked Alyn for her participation. “I’ll always show up for you,” Alyn said.
Both admitted they don’t contact each other as often as they used to, thinking the other was too busy, but they’re always “silently cheering” each other on. “We’re trauma bonded for life,” one of them said. “That is no joke,” came the answer.
In the end, they made birdie on the final par 5 and finished at 5 under, three shots behind the show record.
“Hope you enjoyed today’s chaotic, very chaotic, but very fun video with Tisha,” Spiranac said, calling Alyn “such an entertaining person on social media.”
The ladies summarized the day in one sentence: “It’s more about the tea that was spilled than the golf that was played.”
New episodes of “Hot Birds,” sponsored by London Jewelers, post Thursdays on Spiranac’s YouTube channel.
