Notah Begay III
| Notah Begay III | |
|---|---|
| — Golfer — | |
| Personal information | |
| Full name | Notah Ryan Begay III |
| Born |
September 14, 1972 Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) |
| Weight | 195 lb (88 kg; 13.9 st) |
| Nationality |
 United States
|
| Career | |
| College | Stanford University |
| Turned professional | 1995 |
| Former tour(s) |
PGA Tour Nationwide Tour European Tour |
| Professional wins | 6 |
| Number of wins by tour | |
| PGA Tour | 4 |
| Other | 2 |
| Best results in major championships |
|
| Masters Tournament | T37: 2000 |
| U.S. Open | 22nd: 2000 |
| The Open Championship | T20: 2000 |
| PGA Championship | 8th: 2000 |
Notah Ryan Begay III (born September 14, 1972) is an American professional golfer. He is the only full-blood Native American golfer on the PGA Tour. He is currently an analyst with the Golf Channel.
Begay was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and graduated from a private high school, Albuquerque Academy. He attended Stanford University, where he was a three-time All-American and a teammate of Tiger Woods. He was a member of Stanford's 1994 NCAA Division I Men's Golf Championship team. After graduation, Begay turned professional in 1995.
In 1998, Begay shot a 59 in the second round of the Nike Tour Dominion Open, to join the few golfers to ever shoot a 59 in a professional tournament. He placed 10th on the Nike Tour money list that year, earning a place on the PGA Tour for 1999.
Begay had a pair of wins in each of his first two seasons on the Tour. From late September 1999 to early July 2000, a period of just over nine months, Begay recorded four PGA Tour wins, with the third and fourth wins coming in successive weeks. Since then, he was plagued by back trouble which 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. At the end of 2006, he successfully earned a card for the European Tour from their qualifying school. In December 2008, he regained his playing card for the 2009 PGA Tour season at Q-school.
Begay has been featured in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings. He successfully utilized a unique putting method. Using a putter with playing faces on both the front and back of the head, he putted right-to-left-breaking putts right-handed, and left-to-right-breaking putts left-handed. Begay is the first top player to use such a technique and putter.
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