At Heart of Cart Issue

Just look at the size of that cart.

It was given by a judge to Casey Martin on Wednesday, and just look at it.

It’s more than big enough for a weak-legged golfer who only wanted a chance to making a living playing golf.

It’s more than big enough for those disabled citizens asking not for a head start, but equal footing.

It’s big enough for all of us, this wondrous cart, deep and wide, with the strength to carry society uphill toward a new level of humanity.

Maybe we moved only an inch Wednesday, maybe not that much, but we moved, we advanced, the scenery has changed.

So jump on, why don’t you?

Maybe you already have.

Maybe you are one of the millions who have never hit a golf ball that wasn’t purple, who’ve dated Big Bertha but would never own one. Maybe by watching this battle between Martin and the PGA Tour, you have realized two very important things.

Golfing is not walking. Walking is not golfing.

You understand that giving Casey Martin a cart, while violating the rules of the PGA Tour, is not like giving a sore-legged baseball player a designated runner.

It is, instead, like giving that player cab fare to the stadium.

You look at the statistics and realize, even when golfers can have carts, as they do on the senior tour, they don’t want them.

Golfers lose the rhythm of the course with a cart. Golfers lose time to think with a cart.

You figured out that Casey Martin was not asking for implementation of special treatment, but the end of a silly tradition.

He got it. For the sake of all silly traditions that exclude and isolate, today is glorious indeed, and you celebrate.

But maybe not.

Maybe you are a weekend hacker who still believes that a part of golfing must be walking, because that is the way you were taught, the way it has always been done.

No judge is going to convince you that an entire sport should change its rules for one competitor, because rules are rules, and men are men.

You have to use a cart when you play on Saturday mornings at your country club, but only because it is required, you would never do it on your own, no way, you will walk until you keel.

And if that accident happens to crush the cigar in your shirt pocket and ham sandwich in your side pocket, so be it.

Maybe you think Casey Martin is a coward. A friend who is the parent of a disabled child and sits on the board of a major charity for the disabled, he thinks that.

He said that Martin dishonors the effort of all disabled by asking for special treatment. He says he is tired after a day of golf, so carts are special treatment.

Or maybe you’re just an old golfer who doesn’t want to see anything else in your elite sport change. You like the sweaters, the smokers, the walkers.

Maybe you are like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who, during the trial, took time from their unofficial roles as golf ambassadors to hit Martin with chop blocks.

If so, if you lost Wednesday, there is something you should try to see amid the dust surrounding the splendid collapse of another barrier.

Casey Martin cannot hurt you.

Even if Casey Martin could win a PGA Tour tournament--unlikely considering his right leg is deteriorating by the day--he cannot hurt you.

His presence makes the game of golf more inclusive, more personable, more marketable.

He will not only make the sport more popular, he will make you feel better for having played it.

Fine, critics will say. But now what will the tour do? How will it stop everyone with an ingrown toenail from petitioning to ride on a cart?

What will keep the placid, picturesque weekly tournaments from becoming regular traffic jams?

The golfers, that’s who.

PGA Tour officials could use this decision to begin tossing cart keys to every golfer, but the officials had better duck.

Because most of those keys will be tossed back.

If surveys are accurate, only three of 10 golfers would ride carts if they were available. And until statistical evidence exists that carts result in lower scores, it will remain that way.

That’s not what the tour will do, of course. It isn’t tossing keys to anyone.

It will appeal the decision, dragging Martin’s mottled leg through the mud a little longer.

Then once it becomes obvious that the tour has no chance at victory, it will allow only Martin to ride a cart, forcing others with similar circumstances to beg and fight in the same way.

What Wednesday’s decision cleansed, the tour will try to make filthy again, which is what elitist organizations always do when imperfections come to their doors.

Only now, it will not work. The cart is moving now, faster every day, steered with courage, navigated by common sense, Casey Martin at the wheel, millions at his side.

A regular joy ride, it is.