Cigar Guy

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About

Cigar Guy is a photoshop meme stemming from a photograph of professional golfer Tiger Woods taken during the 2010 Ryder Cup^[1] in Wales, United Kingdom. The image initially began circulating online for its perfectly-timed capture of Tiger Wood's ball flying straight towards the camera, but the Internet's attention soon shifted to a spectator wearing a turban and fake mustache in the crowd, who was eventually dubbed "Cigar Guy."

Origin

During the 2010 Ryder Cup held on October 3rd, 2010, the Daily Mail photographer Mark Pain was hit with a golf ball as Tiger Woods was attempting to make a chip shot in the last hole of the round. Just before the ball hit the lens of Pain’s camera, he snapped a photograph capturing the ball in mid-air, Wood’s look of concern and the curious gazes of the crowd. It was subsequently posted on the Daily Mail^[2] website.

Spread

The cigar-toting fan in the crowd was first pointed out by a Redditor^[5] aatmka, who posted a Facebomb photo turning the entire crowd into the Cigar Guy. The humor blog BroBible^[4] also began photoshopping the fan into other images later that same day.

On October 4th, Cigar Guy images were posted on Urlesque^[9], Memebase^[6] and Tauntr^[7], and a Facebook fan page^[8] was established for the still-anonymous spectator. On October 5th, MSNBC^[10] reported on the photoshop meme, which led to a flurry of other mentions in the press the next day, including Bleacher Report^[11], the Huffington Post^[12], the Washington Post^[13], TIME NewsFeed^[14], Funny or Die^[15] and the Daily Mail.^[16]

Identity

On October 9th, 2010, the Daily Mail^[17] tracked down the man in the photograph, a South London resident by the name of Rupesh Shingadia (shown below, left). In an exclusive interview, Shingadia revealed he was wearing a costume in tribute to Spanish golfer Miguel Ángel Jiménez^[18] (shown below, right) as a way of showing his support for the European team. An investment analyst, he told the Daily Mail that he would have never worn the costume had he known the life it would take on, but he was glad to be able to "put a smile on people's faces."^[17] Following this interview, Cigar Guy's identity was also mentioned on Urlesque^[19], Yahoo! News^[20] and TIME NewsFeed^[21], leading up to an appearance on NBC's TODAY show^[22] on October 15th, 2010.

Tony Capobianco's Baseball Pitch Photo

During the ceremonial first pitch of a baseball game between the Red Sox and the Cardinals held at Fenway Park on August 16th, 2017, Massachusetts teenager Jordan Leandre accidentally threw a baseball directly into a photographer Tony Capobianco's groin (shown below).

That evening, Capobianco tweeted a photograph of the ball flying at him moments before being hit, along with the caption "Feel free to caption this, America" (shown below).^[23] Shortly after, the photograph was posted in a Reddit thread about the incident, where many compared it to the Cigar Guy photograph.^[24]