SOME BUMPER CROP DOWN ON THIS FARM.

Byline: Karen Crouse

Don't be surprised if right there on Riviera Country Club's practice greens, Stanford's fraternity, Phi Beta Birdies, convenes for its five-year reunion this week.

Three members of the Cardinal's 1994-95 golf team are entered in the Nissan Open: Notah Begay III, Casey Martin and Tiger Woods. Together they account for 19 victories on PGA Tour courses and one monumental victory against the PGA Tour in court.

Stanford doesn't boast the only golfing honors fraternity on tour. The top-300 register includes five UCLA Bruins who played together in the early 1980s (Jay Delsing, Steve Pate, Corey Pavin, Tom Pernice and Duffy Waldorf). Stanford sticks out because, until recently, its golfing Greeks were largely lost among the computer geeks and SAT freaks. Woods gets credit for putting Stanford golf on the map, though anybody who buys that ought to brush up on his geography.

That's so silly, it's like saying there was no rock and roll before the Beatles, no exposed midriffs before Britney Spears, no reason for watching the NBA before Michael Jordan.

In 1971, the Farm produced a pretty fair golfer by the name of Tom Watson. Twenty-three years later, the Cardinal would arrive on the national intercollegiate scene right before Woods did.

The 1993-94 squad won the NCAA team title. The next year, with Woods leading the charge, the Cardinal settled for second after losing a one-hole playoff to Oklahoma State.

``Man,'' Begay kidded Woods at the time, ``you come here and we get worse.''

Martin, playing on a withered right leg rendered nearly brittle by a birth defect, was the squad's inspirational leader. Begay and Woods both can recall bunking with Martin on the road at various times during the school year and being shaken into silence when they got a glimpse of Martin's enduring reality.

The three of them would talk about reuniting one day on the PGA Tour, but, privately, they all wondered if Martin's leg would stand in his way.

The sports world is filled with players who fold when adversity has them in a headlock. Martin is not one of them. He pinned self-pity by earning his PGA playing privileges last fall. Martin finished 14th on the Nike Tour money list to secure his touring card after successfully suing the PGA Tour for the right to ride a cart during competitive rounds.

Until Woods came along, Begay held sway as Stanford's best player. He shot a 10-under-par 62 at Stonebridge Country Club, outside Dallas, during the 1994 NCAA Tournament to set the existing single-round record (and presage his 59 on the Nike Tour).

The three-time All America selection was the one player from that NCAA championship squad whose game seemed preordained for the PGA Tour. It was written in his name, for goodness sakes, Notah meaning ``almost there''in Navajo.

To be sure, Begay, 28, took the long way to Stanford. A full-blooded Native Ameican (he is part San Felipe Pueblo, Navajo and Isleta Pueblo), Begay came from a broken home and grew up in an austere adobe house on the Isleta Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico.

By the time he got to college, Begay had played through countless hazards, poverty and prejudice chief among them.

He could have resented the only child of the doting parents from the comfortable, middle-class background who was tearing up the junior golf circuit. The sports world is filled with prima donnas who'd sooner quit than relinquish the spotlight.

Begay is not one of them; he recruited Woods hard.

``I said, `Man, you've got to go to Stanford,' '' Begay recalled. ``I told him if he got there, it was going to be something special.''

Woods didn't require much arm twisting. Stanford coach Wally Goodwin had been corresponding with Woods since the golfer wrote to him in the seventh grade asking, ``What do I have to do to go to Stanford?''

By his senior year at Anaheim's Western High, Woods had narrowed his college choices to UNLV, Arizona State and Stanford.

He visited all three campuses. Stanford rolled out a sleeping bag but no red carpet. Woods slept on the floor of a golfer's dorm room during his stay, same as any other recruit.

The sports world is filled with prima donnas who would have balked at being denied special treatment and would have run for the campus where the boy could be King.

Not Woods. He chose Stanford specifically because he could blend into a student body where amazing is average.

``I wasn't a celebrity at Stanford,'' he has said. ``That's why I loved the place.''

Woods, 24, carried his teammates' bags as a freshman, per a longstanding tradition, and also carried the team. He won 11 tournaments in two years, capping his collegiate career, as it were, with the 1996 NCAA indvidual crown. He was the second Stanford player to take individual NCAA honors, after Frank Tatum Jr. in 1942.

He dropped out of Stanford to turn pro before his junior year. Woods left the program in good hands, with Joel Kriebel carrying on the legacy Woods helped champion and passing it on, torch-like, to Ron Won, who last year broke Woods's high school CIF single-round mark.

When Martin, Begay and Woods get together now, they have tons to talk about. The Cardinal's basketball team is No. 2 in the country, the football team is the reigning Pacific-10 champion, the baseball team was rankedNo. 1 in the preseason. It makes them exceedingly proud to know that for all they have accomplished individually, they are part of something much, much bigger.

``Kind of like Tiger is setting the standard out here,'' Begay said, ``Stanford is setting the standard for (collegiate) academic and athletic excellence. It's a magical place.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo: (1 -- color) Tiger Woods

(2) Members of Stanford's 1995 golf team included Tiger Woods (back row, fourth from left), Notah Begay (to Woods' left) and Casey Martin (back row, second from right).

Photo courtesy of Stanford University

Box: Nissan Open