The Golf Expression 'Let the Big Dog Eat' Explained
Imagine standing on the teeing ground looking at the hole laid out ahead and considering how to play the hole. Maybe your drives to this point in the round have been so-so, or maybe it's a hole whose layout encourages golfers to club-down and choose a safer option than driver. But that's not what you want to do. You want to be aggressive, you want to go for it. So you pull driver — the big dog — from your bag, and you turn to your fellow-competitors and say, "It's time to let the big dog eat." And let it rip.
That is the most-used meaning of "big dog" and "let the big dog eat" in the golf world today. The phrase actually has three meanings, and they are listed here in order of current usage, most-frequent to least:
- "Big dog" means the driver, the longest-hitting club in golf; and "let the big dog eat" means hit the driver, especially in the context of choosing to go for it rather than to play it safe.
- "Let the big dog eat" is used as another way saying go for it, go for broke, let it rip. This usage doesn't necessarily refer to using driver, but to making the decision not to play a safe shot in favor of a riskier shot with a bigger reward (such as going for a par-5 green in two when you have to clear some hazard).
- "Big dog" is used as the equivalent of top dog, alpha dog, big man on campus, and "let the big dog eat" refers to that golfer surging up the leaderboard or pulling off a succession of great shots.
There is a dictionary of golf lingo that uses Let the Big Dog Eat! (affiliate link) as its title (subtitle: "A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Golf"), and defines "big dog" this way:
"The driver. As in, 'Come on, Margie, not that 7-wood again! Why don't you let the big dog eat once in a while?' Sometimes referred to as 'letting the big dog bark'."The earliest newspaper usage of the phrase, in a golf context, that we've found so far is from a golf writer's column in 1978. In it, the writer lists a few golf slang expressions that will be explained in a coming magazine edition, and admits that he doesn't know what any of them mean. One of the listed phrases was "let the big dog eat." So we know the epxression was in use among some golfers by 1978, but that it was not universal and many golfers were not yet familiar with it or its meaning.
We've found newspaper uses of the phrase earlier than 1978 but not in a golf context.
An early newspaper usage of the phrase in one of its altnernate meanings from above is the following one from 1980. A columnist was writing about Jack Nicklaus' just-completed victory in the 1980 U.S. Open after Nicklaus had struggled the year before. The columnist wrote of seeing Lee Trevino watching the tournament on television in the clubhouse, late in the final round, when Nicklaus rammed home a long and key putt. When that putt hit the hole and dropped, the columnist wrote, Trevino "threw his fist into the air and exclaimed, 'Move over and let the big dog eat!'."
Trevino's comment was picked up by many newspapers over the remainder of 1980, and that might be the occasion of the phrase's first real widespread use in golf. It's interesting that this early usage is an example of No. 3 in our list of meanings above, the meaning of the term that is least-used today.
Big dog/let the big dog eat referring specifically to the driver and that usage becoming the most-common way the phrase is used is possibly due to a movie. In the 1996 Kevin Costner movie Tin Cup (affiliate link), Costner plays a burned-out former tour pro stuck running a worn-down driving range. "Big dog" and "let the big dog eat" are used in two different scenes in the movie, in all instances referring to the driver, and referring to not being afraid to use the driver, especially in a situation when many others might choose to play it safer with a shorter club.
"Waggle it and let the big dog eat," Costner's character says in one scene, later adding, "I'm just saying let him loose, let it rip, let the big dog eat."
More definitions:
- 34 slang terms golfers have for bunkers and sand
- Beware the 'hand wedge'
- The golf score called a 'dodo'
Johns, Bruce. "Golf Jargon," The Flint (Mich.) Journal, April 16, 1978.
Pedroli, Hubert, and Tiegreen, Mary. Let the Big Dog Eat!, William Morrow Publisher, 2000
Shelton, Ron. Tin Cup (movie script), Regency Enterprises Productions, 1996.
StraightDope.com. The Straight Dope Message Board, "In golf, what is Let The Big Dog Eat," https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-golf-what-is-let-the-big-dog-eat/189144.
West, Marvin. "Now's Best Time for Nicklaus' Exit," The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, June 16, 1980.