Notah Begay III
From NativeWiki
Notah Begay III (born September 14, 1972) is an Navajo American golfer.
Begay was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and graduated from high school at Albuquerque Academy. He graduated from Stanford University, where he was a 3-time All-American, and turned professional in 1995. He placed tenth on the Nike Tour money list in 1998 to win a place on the PGA Tour for 1999. He had a pair of wins in each of his first two seasons on the PGA Tour. Since then he has been plagued by back trouble which has put his future as a professional golfer in doubt. In 2005, he played under a "Major Medical Exemption" with little success. In 2006, he played on the Nationwide Tour. He is the only full-blooded American Indian (Navajo/Pueblo) tour golfer in the history of the game. At the end of 2006 he successfully earned a card for the European Tour from their qualifying school. He is one of a handful of professional golfers to shoot 59 in a tournament.
In January 2000 he was arrested and served seven days in jail for what, he admitted in court, was actually his second DWI incident. In his second incident he was arrested after driving into a parked car outside an Albuquerque strip club. He was originally sentenced to 364 days in jail but the judge suspended all but 7 days. Additional controversy arose when it was discovered that he was actually let out during the day during his stay in jail to work at his job, essentially spending his jail time days golfing.
He has featured in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings.
PGA Tour wins
- 1999 (2) Reno-Tahoe Open, Michelob Championship at Kingsmill
- 2000 (2) FedEx St. Jude Classic, Canon Greater Hartford Open
Other wins
- 2000 Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge (with Rocco Mediate and Phil Mickelson)
