Disabled Golfer Wins Access to Cart in Pro Tours

In a decision that holds professional sports accountable for opening competition to the disabled, a federal magistrate ruled Wednesday that golfer Casey Martin can play the top-level PGA and Nike tours with the aid of a golf cart.

The case, which opened a national debate on the nature of athletic competition and whether golf is an endurance sport, marks the first time that the 7-year-old Americans With Disabilities Act, designed to expand opportunities for the disabled in public accommodations, has been applied to athletes in a major sport.

Martin--a 25-year-old golfer with a circulatory disorder in his leg so painful that he has trouble walking an 18-hole round--said he will immediately enter the Nike Greater Austin Open in Texas next month, use a cart, and prove he is as capable an athlete as his competitors.

Martin has qualified to play on the Nike Tour, essentially a minor league to the PGA Tour. To play on the PGA Tour, Martin would need to win three Nike events, finish among the top 15 Nike money winners at the end of the year or score among the top players in the PGA Tour’s qualifying tournament.

“I just hope maybe five or 10 years from now, if I’m still able to play golf, the PGA Tour will just kind of lean back and scratch their heads and say: ‘Now why did we fight this guy?’ ” said Martin, who repeatedly fought back tears during a news conference after the court ruling.

“I just want to be given a chance to play,” he said. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have done this if I’d have thought I had an advantage” with a cart.

PGA Tour Commissioner Timothy Finchem said Martin will be accommodated with a cart while the tour appeals the ruling. He said a policy board will have to determine whether all PGA and Nike players will now have to be afforded the use of golf carts.

“The PGA Tour is disappointed with the court’s decision,” he said in a statement. “As we have said from the outset of this lawsuit, we believe firmly in the basic premise of any sport, that one set of rules must be applied equally to all competitors. Additionally, we believe strongly in the central role walking plays for all competitors in tournament championship golf at the PGA Tour and Nike Tour levels.”

But Martin’s lawyers said the rules of athletic competition do not remove the obligations under the law to accommodate players with disabilities, if it can be done reasonably. Allowing Martin a golf cart simply “levels the playing field” for all the competitors, attorney Martha Walters said.

“We’re seeking an equal opportunity for Mr. Martin to demonstrate his abilities,” she said in closing arguments earlier in the day. “Mr. Martin just needs a ride to the starting line. We’re not asking for a 50-yard lead.”

She said the ruling, although it cannot be cited as precedent because it did not come from an appeals court, is an important gateway for disabled athletes.

“It will affect sports at all levels. We’re talking about high school kids, college kids, all kinds of kids that might otherwise have been unable to play who now will be able to,” she said. “Maybe not at the professional level, but at all kinds of levels. It means a career for one person, and it means hope for millions of others.”

PGA lawyers from the beginning had argued that the rule requiring golfers to walk adds an important ingredient of stress and fatigue to the game, whose competitors often have to walk up to 25 miles over a four-day series.

Golfers Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus offered videotaped testimony affirming the role of fatigue in the outcome of a round. “Physical fitness and fatigue are a part of the game at that level,” Nicklaus said.

Medical experts testifying for Martin countered that the actual amount of calories expended is negligible. U.S. Magistrate Thomas Coffin trumped the debate by concluding Martin works as hard riding in a golf cart through a round as most players walking the full 18 holes.

“What he as an individual is experiencing, given his condition, is easily greater than the fatigue factor induced in the able-bodied person walking the course,” the judge said.

Martin, a member of Stanford’s 1994 NCAA championship team and a former teammate of Tiger Woods, has suffered since birth from a progressive and painful condition known as Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome. Because his leg has no major vein to return blood to the heart, the blood pools up, causing swelling and atrophy that could eventually require amputation.

His thin, weak limb is so painful that it sometimes feels like it is “going to blow up,” he testified last week. “If I could trade my leg and a cart for a good leg, I’d do it any time, anywhere.”

Paul Azinger, whose career was interrupted for more than a year by cancer, said he might have continued playing on the PGA Tour--even while undergoing chemotherapy--had he been permitted to use a golf cart.

“I don’t want to say I definitely could have played if I had a cart, but I probably would have considered playing, even during chemo,” Azinger said after the pro-am prelude to the Hawaiian Open.

PGA lawyers did not address Martin’s medical condition specifically, asserting that the law did not require individual analysis. They argued that the tour is not required to make accommodations that would result in fundamentally altering the nature of the facility or event to which access is sought.

Even more narrowly, said PGA lawyer William Maledon, the court cannot order accommodation if it would require even a fundamental alteration of a substantive rule.

“There is no case under ADA in which the court was asked to alter the rules of competition,” Maledon said. “It doesn’t matter whether [the walking-only rule] is a fundamental rule of golf. What’s important is it’s a fundamental rule of the PGA Tour and Nike Tour competitions.”

But the judge rejected the PGA’s assertions that the courts have no place in setting the rules of competition, so long as a disabled competitor like Martin can prove he could be reasonably accommodated.

“This is not about accommodating an individual with a broken leg. It’s about accommodating an individual that the PGA does not dispute has a disability,” Coffin said in his ruling.

Moreover, the PGA’s existing rules allowing carts in qualifying rounds and for the PGA Senior Tour, along with the NCAA’s approval of carts for disabled players in college competition, indicates that such accommodations can be reasonably made, the judge said.

Although there have been few such cases brought under the disabilities act, the prevailing law seems to require an individual assessment and a determination of whether accommodating a particular athlete would fundamentally alter the nature of the competition.

Martin’s case meets that test, the judge said, because he is as tired riding a cart as most players are walking the course.

“This does not mean anyone else out there can have a cart,” the judge warned. “Any perception that he has an unfair advantage is simply wrong.”

After the hearing, lawyers for Martin said the PGA’s own argument that a cart offers a competitive advantage could force the organization to open up golf cart use to all competitors.

PGA spokesman Bob Combs said the tour still believes “a fundamental principle of sports [is] that all competitors come to compete as equals, they participate under the same rules, and may the best man win.”

“Clearly, however, we now have an obligation to furnish Casey Martin with a golf cart in his Nike Tour competition, and we will do that,” he said. “He’s an exemplary young man. We find a great deal to admire about him. This has never been about Casey Martin.”

Armed with an earlier preliminary injunction that allowed him to use the cart temporarily, Martin won the first tournament he was allowed to play last month in Lakeland, Fla.

“I’ll admit I’ve been blessed with talent,” Martin said at his press conference, “but I’m not a phenom.”

* POINT-COUNTERPOINT: Columnists Bill Plaschke and Mike Downey debate pros and cons of Martin verdict. C1