Time Is Now to Get Golf Back on Course

Let’s play golf. After a record growth year in 1997, the PGA Tour found the first two months of 1998 dominated by names like U.S. Magistrate Thomas Coffin, Casey Martin and El Nino rather than Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Davis Love III.

The tour desperately needs to get attention back to the game--and onto the golf course--now.

Maybe it is all a sign of growing pains.

For years, professional golf has wanted to climb to that top tier of sports and be as popular--and as lucrative--as baseball, basketball and football.

But success comes with problems, as team sports have found. Certainly part of the new-found popularity golf achieved in recent years is a recognition by fans that the game has not been overwhelmed by off-field headlines, as team sports have.

No strikes. No lockouts. No drug arrests. No coaches choked. No free agents insulted by $25 million contracts.

Golf has provided sports fans a breath of fresh air by being pleasantly free of such distractions.

The last few years, however, have given ominous signs that golf is not immune from the problems that have soured fans on other sports.

There was the Greg Norman showdown with PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem over the idea of a world tour. Finchem won the standoff and created his own version of the world tour with the World Golf Championships.

John Daly’s NBA-like behavior problems and Fuzzy Zoeller’s jokes about Woods--and Woods’ delay in accepting Zoeller’s apology--took the game onto dangerously thin ice.

The game drifted into the annoying area of lawsuits, where lawyers become more important than athletes, with the Karsten square grooves suit, a Federal Trade Commission restraint of trade investigation and the suit by Harry Toscano challenging eligibility rules on the Senior PGA Tour.

And then there was the Casey Martin trial, perhaps the biggest public relations disaster in the history of the PGA Tour. The game was able to integrate racially with more grace than it was able to handle the Martin matter.

Certainly, the Martin case was more complicated. When the PGA had a “Caucasians only” clause there was no question that was wrong.

Martin’s birth defect, which makes it painful and even dangerous for him to walk 18 holes, struck at the definition of golf at its highest competitive levels.

And at no point did it seem compromise was possible. Walking was either part of the game at its highest levels or it wasn’t. And the PGA Tour either had the authority to determine its rules or it didn’t.

Now, because of Coffin’s ruling and the PGA Tour’s wise response, there seems to be room for a compromise of sorts.

Martin will get his chance to play on the Nike Tour and see if he can make it to the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour will not push for an expedited appeal, an appeal it still has a chance to win.

“I hope five to 10 years from now, if I’m still able to play golf, the PGA Tour will lean back and scratch their heads and say, ‘Why did we fight this guy?”’ Martin said after Coffin’s decision allowing him to ride a cart.

It’s unlikely the PGA Tour will ever feel that way. It truly believes in the issues involved. But what Martin does have, what golf does have, is a window of a couple of years in which he can play unchallenged.

We should all enjoy the view from that window. This case is far from decided, but at least we have some time in which attention can return to the game.

“The main thing right now is that everyone needs to recognize that it might take years for this to be decided,” Finchem said a day after the verdict. “What we want to do is get back to playing golf. Casey will be afforded a cart.”

With those words and the decision to let the legal process leisurely go forward, the focus on golf can shift from the courts to the course.

Now, if only El Nino could be sued.