Paige Spiranac: The wannabe golf star taking a very different road to the top

You've probably not heard of Paige Spiranac.

She's a 22-year-old golfer who recently graduated from San Diego State University, where she was a key member of the successful College golf team.

She also recently won the Colorado State Match Play title, shooting a 68 in one of her rounds to claim the 'medallist' award for the best round of the week into the bargain.

In other words, she has genuine golf talent. But rather than focus solely on that, she is a taking a very different path to the top.

You might call it the 'Anna Kournikova' path. And it's made her an internet smash.

Key to it all is Paige's recently-created Instagram page, which doesn't show her crushing straight drives, sinking devilish putts or hitting beautifully-flighted irons. Instead, it shows her in a succession of low-cut, skin tight outfits.

Not that she doesn't carry it off - she's a stunning young woman, and you can see why she's generated such headlines as "Paige Spiranac is the hottest female athlete on earth and there is no arguing this".

Those headlines have already earned her a huge following, as this graph shows: it's a stats chart showing the amount of web searches for 'Paige Spiranac' versus 'Gee Chun'.

[In case you came to this page for non-golfing reasons, Gee Chun is the young player who won the US Women's Open on Sunday. That's the biggest women's golf tournament in the world, bar none.]

There seems little doubt that Paige will have a successful career and make a huge amount of money, and we suppose that all's fair in love, war and 21st century sporting fame. And she's far from the first female athlete to trade on her looks to get ahead.

But in the week that Laura Davies was inducted in the World Golf Hall of Fame, we can't help thinking that Paige appears to be on a path which could never lead to that sort of hallowed destination.