Remember when Tiger Woods upchucked during the regional matches of the 1995 college golf championships and went on to lead his Stanford team to a runner-up finish against Oklahoma State?
Tiger Woods once puked his way through NCAA Men’s Golf Championship
Notah Begay and Casey Martin recall the time during the 1995 NCAA Men’s Golf Championship when Tiger Woods overcame food poisoning to lead Stanford to victory in the regionals.
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Probably not, because there were no spectators recording the action with iPhones, no wall-to-wall TV coverage and no social media platforms on which a “Puking Tiger” meme could take off. But Casey Martin and Notah Begay, -- Cardinal teammates of Woods -- do, and they recall the bad BBQ that laid Martin low and had Tiger hurling down the stretch of his final match.
With the regionals in New Mexico that year, Albuquerque native Begay took the squad to his favorite barbecue joint, where Woods and Martin chowed down on the same menu item.
“I remember very vividly waking up at 1 in the morning and I was hurting so bad, and then Tiger woke up and we started throwing up all night,” Martin said during a teleconference this week on the NCAA Golf Championships.
Begay’s memories of seeing his buddies “on death’s door practically,” were just as sharp. He also knew that one of them would have to suck it up and play or the defending champions and No. 1 team in the country would be toast.
“I had the leg and the stomach, so I knew Tiger would help me,” said Martin, who was born with a birth defect in his right leg.
Begay filled in the rest of the story, which featured Woods setting up over his tee shot on the par-3 17th hole.
“Then he backed off, walked to the side of the tee, threw up, walked over there, hit it on the green and two-putted,” said Begay, further burnishing the saga of Woods as a golfer who would play, and win, no matter what ailed him (see: 2008 U.S. Open).
It was certainly nothing a post-round IV session in the ER couldn’t handle.
Hurling his way around a golf course is nothing new for Woods, who posted his lowest round of the week during his 2014 Hero World Challenge while battling flu-like symptoms.
“I’ve been throwing up for hours,” Woods said back then after posting a 3-under 69 in Saturday’s third round. “Yesterday’s fever was higher but today the nausea and the vomiting before and during the round, I didn’t have that issue yesterday.”
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