Tiger talk stirs in CNY - Thursday, July 31, 2008
By Chris Wagner
Staff writer
It's nice to dream about what kind of crowd Tiger Woods would have brought into Turning Stone for a skins game. Ten-thousand? Twenty-thousand? Thirty-thousand?
Certainly more than the 5,000 or so who showed up for past skins game in Central New York featuring the likes of Arnold Palmer, John Daly, Natalie Gulbis, Gary Player and Chi Chi Rodriguez. And perhaps even more than the 33,000 who visited Atunyote Golf Club last year during the four rounds of the inaugural Turning Stone Resort Championship.
With a little luck, we will know for certain next year just how big the Tiger factor is.
On Tuesday and again on Wednesday Notah Begay III said the chance of Woods playing in Begay's second annual NB3 Foundation Challenge at Turning Stone next year was "50-50 or better." If the world's No. 1 golfer does show, expect that the event will not only draw a large local crowd but national television coverage as well.
Begay said Wednesday that before Tiger backed out of the inaugural Aug. 26 event because of his knee injury, negotiations were under way to have it televised by either the Golf Channel or CBS. When Woods, Begay's former teammate at Stanford, withdrew, so did the financial support needed for such coverage.
As it is, this year's event will feature a solid lineup of Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, Stewart Cink, Camilo Villegas and Begay. Singh and Cink both rank in the top 10 in the world, while Weir and Villegas are in the top 50. The players will be competing for a $500,000 purse, with the skins increasing from $10,000 per hole for the first six holes to $70,000 for the final hole.
If Woods plays next year, he, too, will receive an appearance fee, Begay said. It no doubt would be larger than the total amount being paid this year. But the tradeoff in gaining one of the planet's most recognizable athletes would be easily obtainable sponsorship backing, huge publicity and television coverage that would bring focus on CNY, Turning Stone and Begay's charitable foundation.
There is onething that people should understand about Begay, a Native American who grew up in Albuquerque, but spent several years on reservations. He is keenly aware of Indian issues nationwide and sincerely passionate about his charity work, which funds Native American golf and soccer programs in his home state of New Mexico. Indeed, he said he has been just as thrilled by his foundation's successes as he was by his four victories in his first two years on the PGA Tour.
"They are different types of satisfaction," he said, "but I think the greatest gift that someone has is the gift of their time."
That says a lot, especially because Begay has struggled personally for the last half-dozen years with a back injury that robbed him at least temporarily of his elite game. While he has finally improved physically this year, regaining the winning touch on the golf course has not been easy.
Where he has succeeded is in giving back.
