Tiger Woods hitting a golf ball toward the camera at the 2010 Ryder Cup with Cigar Guy in the crowd

Cigar Guy

2010photobomb / photoshop memeclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Cigar Guy is a 2010 photobomb meme built around a spectator in a ginger wig, fake moustache, and fat Havana cigar who appeared behind Tiger Woods in a Ryder Cup action shot. The spectator, later identified as London investment analyst Rupesh Shingadia, was dressed as Spanish golfer Miguel Ángel Jiménez, and his wide-eyed cameo triggered a wave of Photoshop edits pasting him into famous photographs.

photo fad memes photoshop memes accidental fame memes viral photo memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Cigar Guy is a photobomb meme built from a single sports photograph shot at the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales1. The picture, taken by Mail on Sunday photographer Mark Pain, freezes the instant a golf ball duffed by Tiger Woods flew straight at the camera lens, with Woods grimacing in the foreground and a row of spectators watching in the background1. One face in that row stole the whole frame: a fan in a ginger wig, thick fake moustache, and a fat Havana cigar, staring wide-eyed at the incoming ball3.

The meme itself is not really the golf shot. It is the small crop of the moustachioed spectator, cut out and dropped into other famous photographs as a Photoshop gag4. Early edits stuck him into everything from The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover to historic news pictures, always with the same startled expression3. The nickname Cigar Guy was pinned on him within a day, before anyone knew who he was4.

The joke works because the source photo is already extraordinary on its own. The ball, Woods' pained face, and the strange man in costume are all in sharp focus at once, so the eye keeps drifting to the wig and cigar even without any edit2. Once the internet noticed him, Cigar Guy became a face people wanted to place inside every other iconic image they could find3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Daily Mail (source photo) / Reddit and BroBible (viral spread)
Creator
Mark Pain; Rupesh Shingadia
Date
2010

On the morning of Saturday, 2 October 2010, Tiger Woods was partnering Steve Stricker in a Ryder Cup fourball against Europe's Ian Poulter and Ross Fisher when he tried to chip his third shot from rain-soaked rough on the final hole1. Woods hit the ground behind the ball and shanked it straight at Mark Pain, a photographer working for The Mail on Sunday, who was standing just off the green1. Pain did not flinch. He kept shooting and captured the ball an instant before it struck his camera, bounced off his chest, and rolled to his feet1.

The photograph ran in The Mail on Sunday and on MailOnline the next day, 3 October 2010, initially framed as a story about Woods and the fearless photographer1. Attention shifted almost immediately once viewers spotted the wigged, moustachioed spectator behind Woods, and blogs began cropping him out to use as a standalone character4.

How It Spread

The cigar-toting fan was flagged early by a Redditor posting under the handle aatmka, who uploaded a Facebomb-style edit that replaced every face in the crowd with the same spectator4. The humor site BroBible piled on the same day, running its own set of Photoshops that dropped the fan into unrelated images4. By 4 October 2010, Urlesque, Memebase, and Tauntr had all posted galleries, and a Facebook fan page for the still-anonymous man had gone up4.

Mainstream press picked it up on 5 October 2010, when MSNBC covered the Photoshop wave, followed the next day by Bleacher Report, the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, TIME NewsFeed, Funny or Die, and a second Daily Mail write-up focused on the meme rather than the golf34. That Daily Mail piece from 6 October 2010 documented the album-cover edits and made the Miguel Ángel Jiménez tribute angle explicit for readers who did not follow European golf3.

On 9 October 2010, The Mail on Sunday tracked the spectator to a house in South London and named him as Rupesh Shingadia, a 30-year-old investment analyst working in the City2. In an exclusive interview, Shingadia said he was 'embarrassed and overwhelmed' by the attention and confirmed the costume was a tribute to Spanish golfer Miguel Ángel Jiménez, worn to show support for the European team2. He was interviewed on NBC's TODAY show on 15 October 2010, closing out the meme's brief run through legacy media4.

How to Use This Meme

The template is simple: crop the Cigar Guy figure out of the original Mark Pain photograph and paste him into another famous image at roughly the same scale, keeping his startled face and cigar intact3. Early edits often placed him in the Sgt Pepper album cover crowd, historic war photos, and other sports action shots where his ginger wig would clash with the setting3. The gag works best when the host image is instantly recognisable, so the viewer spots him quickly and does the double-take the original photo already produces4.

Frequently Asked Questions