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There may be someone out there who doesn't know about the Big Dog meme involving Tiger Woods. But whoever it is, they must be completely off the Internet or oblivious to the world of golf. The meme is so ubiquitous that this person might be very hard to find.
Like any meme, the 'Big Dog' one related to Tiger Woods is a product of the imagination and sense of humor of someone who was lucky enough to reflect many sentiments in one.
In this case, the credit belongs to the staff of No Laying Up, as the original meme emerged on the X (formerly Twitter) account of that media. The original post has accumulated more than seven million views, thus going viral in every sense of the word.
The post shows nothing more than a screenshot of Tiger Woods during the first day of the PNC Championship. Woods is greeting a person and calling him 'Big Dog' with the phrase shown as a caption in the image.
The text used by No Laying Up in the original meme was as follows:
"Running into someone whose name I should definitely remember but I don't".
But a week later, the meme has been accompanied by all sorts of messages, the vast majority humorous, but not all associated with golf. As the author of the meme also said in a post via X:
"This meme belongs to the world now."
Tiger Woods is no stranger to going viral
The 15-time Major champion is the most famous golfer in history and one of the most famous athletes of the last three decades. The media and fan following for Tiger Woods is of such magnitude that having a digital product related to him go viral is nothing new.
The numbers speak for themselves. Woods has 6.5 million followers on X and 3.3 million on Instagram. To put it in perspective, global baseball phenomenon Shohei Ohtani has 6.5 million followers on Instagram (he doesn't have an official X account).
Woods' media impact was described by Mark Raymond for Hollywood Insider (2022) as follows:
"He [Woods] became the barometer by which every golfer was measured against. Young up-and-coming golfer? Let’s see what Tiger did when he was their age. An experienced player winning their first Major championship? Tiger had 8 by then. It was impossible to escape his name or image in any meaningful way."
It is also an impact that has stood the test of time. Even in the 2023 season in which Woods played only three official tournaments without achieving significant results, he was ranked second on the PGA Tour, according to the Player Impact Program (PIP) ranking. Woods was only surpassed by Rory McIlroy.
The PIP precisely measures the PGA Tour player's media presence. It includes Google searches, presence in social networks and on television, etc.
