Notah Begay and the Discipline of Comeback
By Colman McCarthy
For a professional golfer coming back from physical injuries, plus the mental wounds of missing the 36 hole cut in nine straight tournaments, Notah Begay III couldn’t have asked for a finer support group as he walked to Avenel’s first tee on Thursday afternoon. His mother, Laura Ansera, a Pueblo Indian who manages tribal youth programs for the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention in the federal Justice Department in Washington, was there. So was Wilson Pipestem, who studied with Begay at Stanford University and is now a Washington attorney specializing in Indian law.
Next to him in the gallery was Begay’s personal trainer, Chris Frankel, a 1979 graduate of Sidwell Friends school and an exercise physiologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has traveled the tour with Begay since January, overseeing a regimen that includes muscle toning, diet, and functional strength training—all of it aimed at recovering the physical health that helped Begay win four tournaments in one 12 month stretch in 1999 and 2000. When his back went out—annular tears of the L-4 and L-5 discs—Begay could not bend over to tee up his own ball. The caddie did it.
As the tour’s only Native American, Begay had still more supporters at Avenel: members of the Mohave, Cherokee, Pima, Pueblo, Otoe, Pechanga, Mescalero, Dine and Pechanga nations. A few more and it might have been an intertribal powwow, ambulating on land that once belonged to the mighty Potomacs.
Fans and friends are fine but birdies are better. Begay had two of them, along with six pars, in his first eight holes. For a moment, the old self--when winning tournaments seemed like a birthright, the swing was simplicity itself and the cups on putting greens were as large as buckets--appeared to be back. An hour later, after a 35 on the front nine, it was gone: the horror of a seven on the easy par four 10th, a string of missed fairways and putts, and a run of bogeys that would lead to a 42 on the back nine and a 77.
At 29, Begay, with tour playing privileges assured through 2003, is caught in that slough of semi-despond that routinely snares early-peaking athletes whose bodies suddenly give out well ahead of fate’s schedule: confidence is needed to be successful and success is needed for confidence. Which comes first?
After the 77, Begay, who shot a 59 in a 1998 tournament, spoke serenely about his chances for coming back. “I don’t have any doubts. I hit too many quality shots today to feel that there’s no hope. But you’d like to get some positive feedback [from scoring well]. That’s hard to come by right now. It’s something you have to search for in the round to see some positive signs of improvement. There’s some there, but you do get tired of being kicked around.”
On Friday morning, teeing off before 8 on the back nine, the kicking stopped. Begay drilling straight tee shots, including driving the green on the par 4 14th, took it around in 32—10 swings lower than the day before. But the euphoria didn’t last. On Friday’s back nine, on Avenel’s first nine, he shot a 40, five higher than Thursday. Now it’s ten out of ten missed cuts.
Is Begay, the four-time tour winner, a flash in golf’s pan? My own guess is no. I remember playing a round with him three years ago, in a friendly game at a local course. He had yet to win a tournament, but, with no sense of boasting, predicted that his turn was coming. Months later it did.
After both rounds at Avenel this week, the same Begay was talking. The output of focused effort that brought him to the top remained in him. To be chastened by injury and subdued by defeat, and to keep playing and to go practice after another wretched round, has nothing to do with golf and everything to do with maturation. Not yet 30, Begay is maturing early.
Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist, is the author of “The Pleasures of the Game.”