Verplank Can Read Martin the Ride Act

He was at the course at 5:30 a.m. Thursday, hitting practice drives under a spotlight, riding a stationary bike, stepping to the first tee just after dawn.

Then, for 18 holes, diabetic Scott Verplank did what he always has done on the PGA Tour, though he knows he would play better if he didn’t.

He walked.

“Doctors say I have more reason than anybody to ride a cart,” he said after shooting a three-under-par 68 to finish among the leaders in the first round of the Nissan Open at Valencia.

Sitting in the midday quiet of the locker room, he put his hands on his knees and stared at his shoes, sighing, weary.

“But I won’t do it,” he said. “It’s not the way the game is supposed to be played.”

Meet the man who could be the next Casey Martin.

He is the anti-Casey Martin.

The man next in line to sue the PGA Tour for the right to ride a cart, he says he won’t do it because it’s cheating.

He says he knows this because, well, he has cheated.

In December, after Martin won the right to ride a cart in the tour’s six-round qualifying school, Verplank threatened legal action if everyone was not afforded the same opportunity.

Officials relented and allowed all 168 golfers to use a cart.

Verplank was one of about 20 to accept the offer.

He won the tournament by six strokes.

“Never felt better,” he said. “Would I have still won the tournament? I think so. But would I have won it by so much and felt so good? No way.”

He says the grueling week in central Florida was so much fun, he wished a certain Oregon judge could have been there.

“While everybody else was standing around and waiting to hit their next shot, I was sitting in my cart with my feet up,” he said. “I was only going to ride for a couple of rounds, but I got a nine-stroke lead and thought, what the heck? Why change a good thing?”

Afterward Verplank parked his cart, picked up his tour card, and vowed never to ride again.

“It’s a farce to say that having a cart doesn’t change things,” he said. “Because it does.”

You tell him you agreed with the judge who ordered the PGA Tour to allow Martin to ride a cart in tour events.

You ask him to explain, if a cart has so much effect, why don’t more players ride them on the Senior PGA Tour?

“It’s just not the way they were brought up; it’s not who they are,” he said. “I’m the same way.”

Yet there does not exist a more unlikely anti-cart lobbyist.

Verplank, 33, became a full-time pro shortly after winning the 1986 NCAA championship for Oklahoma State.

He won the 1985 Western Open as an amateur, then the 1988 Buick Open, but he hasn’t won since.

He has never won more than $366,045 in a season, which is less than a first-place check at many tournaments this season.

This is a guy who needs all the help he can get.

And that is without the diabetes he has battled since age 9.

The only diabetic on the PGA Tour takes three shots of insulin daily. He eats several meals, even on the course during tournaments.

“My golf bag is like a grocery store,” he said.

The black-and-white monstrosity is filled with crackers, raisins, sandwiches, granola bars.

Usually there is enough food to keep his blood sugar in check. But when there is not, he can play two or three holes in a haze, sometimes shaking.

“I’m just drained,” he said.

As if those situations weren’t enough to warrant a cart, then there are the blisters.

Verplank said foot conditions can become exacerbated because of circulation problems, a common malady for diabetics.

“Casey Martin talks about losing a leg. . . . Well, with diabetes, I could lose my leg and my life,” said Verplank, who also has had three elbow operations.

Yet when he met here with Tim Finchem on Wednesday, and the PGA Tour commissioner asked what he was going to do about the cart situation, Verplank answered in one word:

Nothing.

“I told him that for now, unless my health declines or the tour loses the appeal, I’m walking,” he said. “Golf is the one sport where everybody is not out there trying to get around the rules, and I’m proud of that, and I want to keep it like that.”

Taught golf by his grandmother in Texas, subjected to glaring and scolding if he was ever less than a gentleman, Verplank does more than merely talk the rules.

A couple of years ago in Japan, he fell out of a tie for a tournament lead with four holes remaining when he penalized himself a stroke for an infraction that nobody had seen but him.

His ball had moved an almost imperceptible amount when he placed his club on the ground behind it before a short putt.

“Hardly anybody spoke English, so they didn’t understand what I was doing,” he said. “I kept saying, ‘I got a bogey’ and they kept shouting, ‘No, par, par.’ ”

Then there was the time he played the wrong ball from the rough, but because his partner was using the same ball, nobody noticed.

But Verplank did and, much to his caddie’s surprise, announced his mistake and two-stroke penalty. It dropped him from 12th to 60th.

This attitude was apparently evident in videotaped testimony offered by Verplank at the Oregon trial.

But because his tape was shown after Arnold Palmer’s testimony, Verplank doubted anybody was listening.

“I just wish the judge would have to make 65 decisions in a 4 1/2-hour period, but do it while walking five miles, stopping for one minute and making one decision every 200 yards,” he said. “I just wish he had to do that.”

And Casey Martin? What does Verplank wish for Casey Martin?

Well, he has never actually met him.

“As a human being, I admire his courage,” he said. “But golf is about the integrity of the playing rules.”

Certain he is not confusing integrity for stubbornness and ego, Scott Verplank sighed again and stood. He was heading back to the hotel to rest, 18 holes down, 54 holes remaining, the golf bag stocked, the fingers crossed, a long uphill walk awaiting him, playing by the rules.