by By Ashley Mayo, Golf Digest
Golfers get injured. A lot. Some of these injuries allow athletes to carry on with their lucrative careers. But other injuries persist, forcing players to change the course of their lives.
Notah Begay III experienced the latter. After claiming his four PGA Tour wins over just a nine-month period (from September 1999 to July 2000), Begay was confronted with a pesky back injury that cost him a successful playing career. Instead of sulking, Begay, 42, parlayed his passion for golf into television commentary (he’s an analyst for NBC/Golf Channel) and founded the NB3 Foundation to support leadership development of young people and reduce obesity and Type 2 diabetes in Native American children.
“Golf was a wonderful springboard to talk about important issues,” said Begay, while lounging at a bay at Topgolf The Colony in Dallas on Monday night.
Begay had just been given the Golfers Who Give Back Award, presented by Golf Digest, at the first-annual Green Tie Gala. The Gala, co-sponsored by Golf Digest and Topgolf, raised $250,000, $200,000 of which went straight to the Salesmanship Club’s Momentous Institute, an organization that has been building and repairing social and emotional health in Dallas-area families. (The other $50,000 went to a variety of charities.)….
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After giving people pointers and entertaining the crowd, Begay recounted a tale about a young lady from San Felipe Pueblo, N.M.. She participated in NB3’s soccer program when she was 9, and shortly thereafter had been taken in by a foster family. In the ninth grade, she tested at a seventh-grade math level and a fifth-grade English level. “Now,” Begay said as he leaned forward, “as a senior in high school, she has a 3.7 grade point average, is the captain of her soccer team and just got accepted to two universities. We changed the surroundings that this lady was living in and that dramatically changed the course of her life.”
Just as Begay is changing lives, Topgolf is changing the atmosphere that surrounds golf. And the Green Tie Gala celebrated both of these changes in dynamic style.
Here is another images from Monday:
Read the rest of the story at: http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2014/11/golf-digest-and-topgolf-host-a.html
