Notah Begay III

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 PGA Tour wins
2 External links

Notah Begay III (born September 14, 1972) is an 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 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 is playing on the Nationwide Tour. He is the only full-blooded American Indian (Navajo) 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.

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 bar and strip club. He was originally sentenced to 364 days in jail but the judge supended 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 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings.