Rise to the top lies in the roots

Albuquerque, New Mexico. Think of the US Tour and where its fresh young draftees come from and you think of young country club swells schooled in the grist mills of the upper classes. Young men passing elegantly through adolescence on the beige sunlit fairways of America.

Here, on Lareda, life is as different as the best-known graduate of the course. Chainlink fences and desert. Old rust gatherers in the parking lot. Native Americans lumbering on the practice greens.

A bad adaptation of a Kevin McAleer joke comes to mind.

I'd like to play.

Do you have a reservation?

Is that compulsory?

Think better of it. There's welcome in the air.

Ladera. The breakfast burritos are the best in town, you can play 18 for under $20, you are permitted fivesomes after five and a siren will sound if lightning is about to cut your round or your life short.

Could you want more? Could you. Well one of the greatest players in the world grew up here, literally and in golfing terms. Welcome to Lareda Municipal Course, a strip of green retrieved from the New Mexico desert, irrigated by the Rio Grande and home to Notah Begay, home to half the hack golfers in Albuquerque, home to uncountable lizards and to more than a few stealthy rattlesnakes.

The pro shop is dark and cool inside and a white practice-ball is wedged between the base of the door and the concrete pavement to keep the door open. Under the green awning, players queuing for the hatch window at the starters office daub themselves with suncream. A jeans and T-shirts crowd.

Notah, the local hero is 50 per cent Navajo, and 25 per cent each San Felipe and Isleta Indian. The Isleta still speak Tiwa, but, by and large, these are the secret people of America. Slaughtered, dispossessed, robbed, isolated, squared off onto reservations. As a rule they don't swill Martinis and swing Big Bertha with the country-club gang.

You know the bones of the Notah Begay story. Raised early on the reservation close by here, his family moved away when he was nine, but didn't move far. He played everything well and played golf exceptionally. He hustled for jobs on the course in exchange for range balls. He practised in that absorbed/obsessed kids way.

He won a scholarship at the well-to-do Albuquerque Academy. Kept his head down and drove himself to school on the back roads in a beat-up old truck with no licence.

Another scholarship to Stanford, but gave away large portions of it to allow other kids to go to college. Tiger Woods was second banana to Begay there. Made the pro tour and got busted for driving under the influence in New Mexico.

Volunteered to the court that he had a previous citation from a few years before, thus obliging the court to imprison him and take his licence away. Came back proud wearing his tribal ear-rings, with his brother Clint caddying for him.

Is there another sportsman anywhere with this sense of honour and pride and identity?

Inside the golf shop at Lareda they are chatting about Notah Begay and his good sense. Notah makes a point of playing his practice rounds with the oldest guys on the Tour. At St Andrews for the Open he knocked around with Lee Trevino.

"Sometimes he goes with Fuzzy. Sometimes he goes with O'Meara. Those guys who can teach him something. Notah's smart."

"You can say that again."

Smart. And his brothers Clint and Greg are heading to slurp coke and gulp breakfast in the dimly-lit snack bar now. Lareda Municipal Course is still home to the family at the centre of the best story in golf. Greg sticks his head into the shop and half a dozen kids surround him for his autograph.

The kids are from the Canoncito reservation, a 75,000-acre sprawl that is home to about 800 people. The kids come here three times a week, usually on a bus driven by Notah Begay Snr. They come to learn the rudiments of golf, it's subtleties, it's possibilities. Autograph hunt finished, they go out into the baking heat and line up again to take their swings down the practice fairway.

A few years ago such expeditions would have been unthinkable. But, with a role model, anything can happen. Notah Begay Snr is talking about building golf courses on the reservation. Other Indian nations have done it and last year's New Mexico Open was held on a facility owned by the Santa Ana tribe on their reservation just north of here.

Nike have appointed a Native American rep to work with Notah Begay in bringing the game to the reservations. When Begay's endorsed lines hit the stores they will, at Begay's request, be considerably cheaper than those marketed by Tiger Woods.

Golf may be the game of the white middle classes, but it may also be the game where the Native American meets his oppressor on level terms once again.

In the dark little snack bar, Clint and Greg Begay hang out before hitting the back nine. They point in a diagonal line across the fairways.

"Right there, by the 14th fairway. That's where we grew up." And began to lose their elder brother to golf.

"Our Dad had played some when he was in the Marines," says Greg. "He liked it and he got my brother into it. Every day, Notah was out here. Practising, putting and chipping. Hardly playing, just practising. This is where he made up his flop shot."

The flop shot, a chip that dies at the top of it's arc has been described by Notah as the shot that got him out of Albuquerque.

"I don't know if Notah would be the golfer he is if we had stayed on the reservation," says Clint. "What he had here was access. He used to work here and play golf all the time. On the reservation it was mainly basketball. You look at the reservation kids now, they come here three times a week, but they can't play in between times."

Some Native Americans who leave the reservations are nicknamed by their own. Apples. Meaning red-skinned on the outside, white on the inside. Begay's success and his fidelity to his culture have diminished that mistrust of the outside world.

"There would have been suspicions on the reservation," says Clint. "You leave your culture, leave your people, well nothing good can happen. We had no say in it, we were kids. Our Dad left. He did it for a reason and we turned out the way we did.

"We participate in all we can on the reservation. We still believe, we still pray in the Indian way. There are disadvantages. We don't speak the language.

It's hard. Notah goes back and the elders tell him to be who you are, don't forget, keep praying. He gives them a message too though. It gives everybody confidence.

Outside, the water trap is teeming with goldfish as big as mullet and is bedded with stray golf balls. When the wind stirs itself, a hot desert breeze with no cool in it, a screen of dust hangs over the course and the players bend against it, squinting and tugging their baseball caps down over their eyes.

You could love this place.

Clint wears the traditional ear-rings and a big hooped shirt with a US Open at Pebble Beach crest on it. His brother in the yellow baseball cap carries his own skinny bag.

They wait in line and then head off down the ninth after their drives.

No pulling rank, no country-club swellegance. A couple of true heroes.