No, it isn't a lame joke (although it may have started out like one.) Apparently, there is more of a correlation than you might think.

Starting Monday at about 9 a.m. and peaking at about 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time, ISPs noticed an unusual spike in Internet traffic -- some growing as sharply as 15 to 25 percent.

Security engineers thought the unexplainable rise and crash of Internet traffic pointed to some sort of new and sophisticated DDOS attack.

However, it turns out the strange rise in traffic was due not so much to an external exploit but because of golf -- or rather millions of golf fans. At that time, Tiger Woods happened to be in the middle a playoff round at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines -- which also generated one of the largest Internet-wide flash crowds so far this year, according to security researchers at Arbor Networks Traffic Observatory.

Subsequently, Internet traffic dipped and spiked paralleling Woods' misses and comebacks as millions of viewers flocked to NBC and ESPN to follow the event.

A graph on Arbor Networks' Website charted the rise and fall of inbound traffic according to 70 ISPs, marked in gigabits per second. While inbound traffic experienced a slight rise when Woods was on the third hole, it wasn't until he was on the fifth hole at around 10 a.m. that it took a sharp upward spike. At 11:30 a.m., Tiger was on the 11th hole and traffic remained steady.

At around 12:30 p.m., Internet traffic once again spiked sharply upward. What happened? Apparently, at that time, Woods missed and his competitor, Rocco Mediate, was one up.

At 1:15 p.m. traffic took another upward turn -- right around the same time that the match heated up and went into sudden death.

Finally Tiger won the U.S. Open title at 1:45 p.m., and Web traffic was well into its downward spiral as fans logged off and returned to their day jobs.

The upswing in Internet traffic was largely associated with North American providers, and in general the beefed up traffic was handled without a hitch.

Arbor researchers have dubbed the phenomenon the "Tiger Effect."

The takeaway? Obviously you don't need to be a cyber criminal to create a security scare. And apparently there seems to be a copious amount of office monkeys out there with way too much time on their hands.