Tiger Woods Notah Begay team up to get first win in Begays annual charity event

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Longtime friends Notah Begay and Tiger Woods helped lead the American side to victory in the NB3 Foundation Challenge at Turning Stone.

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John Kekis

Associated Press

Series: Other Tour

VERONA, N.Y. -- Healthy for the first time in years, Notah Begay III finally was on the winning side in his signature charity event, and it felt so very good.

''Five years! Finally! Great!'' Begay said Wednesday after teaming with Tiger Woods to shoot 9 under. ''I had to get on my partner. He was getting a little lackadaisical out there.''

Woods and Begay, longtime friends and former college roommates at Stanford, helped lead the American side to victory in the NB3 Foundation Challenge at Turning Stone Resort's Atunyote Golf Club.

The 12-player field was split into two teams, with Woods and Begay serving on a West squad that also included PGA Tour players Rickie Fowler and Gary Woodland and LPGA Tour players Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson.

Woods and Begay took on K.J. Choi and Y.E. Yang in one of three stroke-play matches that were billed as an ''East Meets West'' challenge involving Asian and American players. The other pairings had Woodland and Kerr against Danny Lee and Se Ri Pak, and Fowler and Thompson playing against Charlie Wi and Yani Tseng.

Woods and Begay beat Choi and Yang 9-7, Woodland and Kerr beat Lee and Pak 8-7, and Tseng and Wi tied Fowler and Thompson 7-7, giving the Americans a 2.5 to 0.5 victory.

The winning team shared $450,000, and Woods presented Begay a check for $500,000 for his foundation. Begay has raised well over $3 million for his foundation, which is dedicated to helping fight obesity and diabetes in the Native American community.

Plagued by back problems that have relegated him to playing only a few PGA Tour events and spending time in the broadcast booth, Begay shone on a bright, sunny day with a slight breeze, carding five birdies to four for Woods.

Before they teed off, Begay turned to Woods and said: ''We want to win, right?'' Woods shrugged, then went out and birdied the opening hole, his short putt catching the lip of the cup and dropping softly to match Yang's birdie.

Yang sank a 4-foot birdie putt at No. 4 and his tip-in birdie at the par-5 fifth hole, a dogleg left, brought his team to 3 under, one shot ahead after Begay rolled in a 6-foot birdie putt seconds later.

Woods made a 33-foot putt for birdie at No. 7 to even the score between the two groups and Begay followed with a short birdie putt at No. 8 as he and Woods reached 4 under.

When Choi rolled in a downhill 12-foot putt that broke slightly right to left at No. 9, he and Yang were at 4 under and tied with Woods and Begay, Fowler and Thompson, Woodland and Kerr, and Danny Lee and Pak. Tseng and Wi birdied the 10th hole to reach 4 under and knot the competition all around.

Moments later, the match turned. Woods birdied No. 10 and Begay followed with birdie at 11 while their foes made bogey, giving the American duo a two-stroke lead they protected over the remaining holes.

''Everybody out there was playing hard,'' Begay said. ''We've got a bunch of competitors here, and we certainly knew Y.E. and K.J. weren't going to give up.

''Tiger's solution to that? I walked over to him after we both kind of made a mess of No. 12 -- and I said, 'These guys aren't going to give up.' He said, 'That's OK, we'll just keep making birdies.' He has a calmness about him, which is good to see.''

Thompson birdied her final hole to halve their match and salvage what was a so-so day.

''Rickie pretty much carried me the whole day,'' Thompson said. ''I put in my 3-footer for birdie. That was a good way to end it.''

Despite a poor showing on the weekend at the first FedExCup playoff tournament -- Woods completed The Barclays at Bethpage Black with a 76, his worst round of the year, to tie for 38th, 11 strokes behind winner Nick Watney -- he was upbeat on this day.

''Considering that this time of year I wasn't playing last year, it's been nice to play a full season,'' Woods said. ''I've been very consistent this year considering I hadn't won in a while. All of a sudden I've got three wins this year. I think that's a positive sign. I've been in contention in a few majors. I've been close. Just got to keep pecking away at it.

''People don't realize that because I sat out for so long last year, I didn't really do any of the work that I needed to do just to improve my game. ''I was just trying to get healthy. The swing changes that I've been trying to implement are finally to start to take shape. I think that's why this season has been so much more productive and why I haven't had the lows I had last year.''

Woods is scheduled to play in the second FedExCup playoff event, the Deutsche Bank Championship, which begins Friday in Norton, Mass.

The NB3 Challenge served as a tune-up of sorts, and Woods was elated to have played with his old Stanford teammate.

''He's played in chronic pain for so long,'' Woods said about Begay, a close friend. ''It was a joy to see him go out and make a few shots, and on top of that just seeing him actually walk normal again. He had a limp there for a number of years. People don't realize the pain he was in.''

Patriots Are Like Another Divisional Foe

Posted Dec 19, 2013

Ryan MinkBaltimoreRavens.com Staff Writer@Ravens All Ryan Mink Articles



The Ravens and Patriots will face off for the seventh time in the past six years on Sunday.


The Ravens are in the AFC North. The Patriots are in the AFC East.

But they might as well be AFC Northeast opponents.

“Let’s put it this way: They are definitely almost like a division opponent,” quarterback Joe Flacco said.

On Sunday night, the Ravens and Patriots will face off for the seventh time in the six-year Flacco era.

They’ve split their six games. The Pats took three of the first four. The Ravens swept both meetings last year. Sunday will be a rematch of the past two AFC championships, which were split.

“They have got the better of us, and we have got the better of them a few times,” Flacco said on Wednesday. “It’s a game that has been consistent and been pretty good over the last few years, and we definitely have a bit of a familiarity with them.”



Over their six games against each other since 2008, four have been decided by less than a touchdown. Last year’s AFC championship game was one of the most lopsided affairs between the two teams as the Ravens shut New England out in the second half to pull away with a 28-13 victory.

The games have almost always been high-stakes as well. Three of the games were playoff contests.

However, this will be the first regular-season game played between the two teams in December during the Head Coach John Harbaugh era.

Last year, the Ravens and Patriots squared off in Week 3 with Baltimore notching a comeback 31-30 win on a last-second Justin Tucker field goal. After the Super Bowl, Harbaugh looked back at that Patriots game as a critical point in letting the Ravens know they could beat anybody.

“To me, rivalries – to use that term – are defined by how important the games are and what is at stake and how good the games are,” Harbaugh said.

“They have always been big games, and fortunately, we have both been in the hunt all those years, so there has been a lot riding on it – this year as much as ever.”

The Patriots are trying to hold onto their playoff spot after suffering a tough loss in Miami. If they lose their next two games, they could fall out of the postseason entirely after holding the No. 1 seed with three weeks to go.

The Ravens, on the other hand, are surging. They’ve won four straight games (tied for the longest streak in the NFL), and a win could clinch a playoff sport or at least force a Week 17 battle in Cincinnati for the AFC North crown.

Multiple Ravens players said they’re looking at this game – just as they have the last several – as a playoff game. This one, however, is between two NFL titans.

“They’re a great organization and they win,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said. “We win around here in Baltimore. It leads to some great games and I guess you could say a rivalry in a way.”

Asked what his emotions are like whenever he steps onto the field to play the Patriots, outside linebackerTerrell Suggs (who was on his best behavior for the media), grinned.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t get lit up – win the game. But, a lot goes through your mind – just not a lot of it is TV-rated.”

Rory McIlroy shoots second straight 65 to grab 36-hole lead at Deutsche Bank Championship

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Rory McIlroy looks comfortable on the smooth greens of TPC Boston and had only one bad spell of back-to-back bogeys on his back nine to reach the midway point at 12-under 130.

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Doug Ferguson

Associated Press

Series: PGA Tour

NORTON, Mass. -- The Deutsche Bank Championship has had a fair amount of heavyweight bouts in only 10 years. This Labor Day weekend is shaping up as another one, featuring two generations of stars.

Rory McIlroy at times made it look easy on his way to another 6-under 65 to take the 36-hole lead. Tiger Woods couldn't buy a putt and still had a 68, leaving him two shots behind. In between was Louis Oosthuizen, a former British Open champion with one of the purest swings in golf.

McIlroy went from one extreme to another on par 5s only 30 minutes apart, but he steadied himself down the stretch on the TPC Boston to set an early target Saturday. No one could catch him in the afternoon, and the two-time major champion wound up at 12-under 130. He had a one-shot lead over Oosthuizen, who had four 2s on his card, including a chip-in on the short par-4 fourth hole, and had a 65.

Ryan Moore had a 68, despite playing the front nine in 1 over, and joined Woods at 10-under 132.

Woods missed out on a chance to be paired with McIlroy on Sunday when he missed the fairway on the par-5 18th, laid up short of the marsh and came up just short of the green and its front hole location. He had to get up-and-down for par.

The TPC Boston is where Woods and Vijay Singh had a memorable battle on Labor Day in 2004, when Singh won to replace Woods at No. 1 in the world. Two years later, Woods closed with a 63 to rally from a three-shot deficit against Singh. And in the first year of the FedExCup in 2007, it was Phil Mickelson who played three rounds with Woods and wound up beating him by two shots.

Woods and McIlroy might be the next one.

"I think if you look at the overall list of champions here, they're all big hitters," Woods said in an effort to explain why the Deutsche Bank Championship provides such great theater.

McIlroy, who won the PGA Championship by a record eight shots at Kiawah Island three weeks ago, looked comfortable on the smoother greens of TPC Boston and had only one bad spell of back-to-back bogeys on his back nine to reach the midway point at 12-under 130.

"Everything seemed to work pretty well out there," McIlroy said. "I felt like I drove the ball a bit better today and hit more fairways, which gave me some more opportunities to make birdies. And I was putting well enough to take a few of those. Yeah, pleased with where I am and looking forward to the weekend."

The weekend is half over, as this FedExCup playoff event is known for its Labor Day finish.

Woods came out firing in the afternoon with back-to-back birdies, only to get slowed quickly with a bogey from the bunker on No. 3 and going bunker-to-bunker on the fourth hole when he scrambled for par. He got back with a shot into 3 feet on the sixth for birdie, but he couldn't take advantage of several shots in the 12- to 15-foot range.

It looked as though it was getting under his skin, but all he had to do was think back to that opening round of 64.

"You've got to let it balance itself out because I made everything yesterday," he said. "Today was one of those days where I had some good looks, missed them, but didn't feel like I was really rolling it correctly. Then I figured something out, and then from then on, I poured it pretty good."

First-round leader Seung-yul Noh (71), Jason Dufner (66) and Masters champion Charl Schwartzel (65) were among those at 9-under 133.

The biggest moment Saturday belonged to Sean O'Hair, who is No. 74 in the FedExCup. Only the top 70 advance to the third stage next week at Crooked Stick, and O'Hair figured he was cooked when he three-putted the 17th to fall two shots over the cut line. But he blistered a 4-iron into 3 feet and made eagle, keeping his hopes alive.

Rickie Fowler made a clutch putt on his final hole, a 4-footer for par that gave him a 72. It looked even more significant at the time because it assured he would make the cut, giving him two more days to make an impression on Davis Love III before he announces his four captain's picks for the Ryder Cup on Tuesday.

Hunter Mahan had a 72 to end his untimely streak of two missed cuts, boosting his hopes of getting one of the four picks. Dustin Johnson also stayed in the mix, going into the weekend only five shots out of the lead.

McIlroy wasn't much of a factor in the opening playoff event last week at Bethpage Black, where the greens were baked out by sunshine and nearly dead by the third round, making it difficult to score. The greens have been pure at the TPC Boston, and it showed in the scoring.

Then again, he didn't have to make putts from very far. McIlroy made three birdies from inside 10 feet -- one of them a tap-in on the 14th -- and he seized the lead on the par-5 18th. Even though the pin was to the front of the smaller, treacherous green, there was enough wind in his face that he could get 4-iron in the air and have it land softly. It rode a gentle slope to about 10 feet away and he made the eagle putt.

After an 18-foot birdie putt on No. 1, McIlroy was poised to get some separation on the field until he tried to hit a high cut with a 5-wood on the par-5 second. He pushed it too far, into the water, and made bogey.

"That was a really tricky little pin position there on the second," he said. "If you lay up, you're going to have to hit a really good shot to get it close to try and make birdie. I'm sure it played a little easier yesterday, but you'll probably see just as many bogeys as you do birdies there today."

On the next hole, his long putt from the fringe was weak and came up 8 feet short, and he missed that for another bogey. But that was that. He followed with back-to-back birdies to get back to 12 under, and made a 12-foot par putt on the eighth to keep from dropping another shot.

McIlroy attributed the improvement from last week to one thing.

"My putting," he said. "I wasn't very comfortable on the greens at all last week. They weren't the best surfaces. I think everyone saw that. This week, the surfaces are much better, and it gives you a little more confidence that you can roll your putts at the hole a bit more."