While many in the golf world have dealt with simple inconveniences due to the coronavirus pandemic, Notah Begay III’s worries run much deeper.
The Navajo Nation is being severely hit by the virus. The region stretches across a swath of Begay’s home state of New Mexico as well as portions of Arizona and Utah. As of Tuesday evening, according to this report from the Arizona Republic, the nation had 426 identified cases, with 17 confirmed deaths — an increase in 42 cases from the previous day.
The virus has preyed on the tribe’s elderly population and its spread has been especially deadly in the reservation’s small, remote communities, where residents are all but cut off from health care facilities and other essential services.
On a Golf Channel conference call on Thursday afternoon, Begay — who is half-Navajo and 100 percent Native American — had trouble getting through a brief update, admitting the issue is cutting far too close to home.
“I’m probably the one on the call who wishes we were at Augusta the most,” the Golf Channel analyst said. “It would certainly mean that my community wasn’t getting decimated by the COVID-19 crisis. It’s the most highly impacted community in the world right now.”
More than 2,000 people have tested negative for COVID-19, according to a Tuesday press release from the Navajo Nation. Begay said that about 75 percent of his relatives still live on these reservations
“They’re really at the epicenter of this issue. It’s kind of with a heavy heart that I deal with this and I try to push through. It’s been difficult,” he said.
“There’s a historical context here that it’s tough for me to deal with. Basically, we’ve been working on getting supplies, food, as many resources as possible. It’s a scary thing for me. It’s a scary process.
“I’m going to lose some family members, I’m quite certain of it. And I just don’t know who it’s going to be.”
Through his NB3 Foundation, Begay is trying to assist the families hardest hit by the epidemic.
“We want to get direct resources —food and water — to families that live in a lot of the rural areas of these reservations. There are people out there that have zero internet access, they don’t have mobile phone reception, they don’t know what’s going on,” Begay said.
“We’re hopeful we can get through all this and hopeful that we can get back into a regular golf schedule at some point, but in the meantime it’s boots on the ground for me and I’m doing anything and everything … I feel really helpless at this point.”
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