Rales? Martin Situation Follows Cruels of Golf

The Casey Martin story prompts the instant question: Whatever happened to empathy?

Here’s a decent guy who has been gamely fighting a rare and agonizing birth defect that has been punishing him for all 25 years of his life. He swings a golf club pretty darn well, but can’t walk the course because those little blood vessels in his right leg are amok and are strangling the life out of the leg, leading to internal bleeding that is also weakening the bone, and it hurts him awful to negotiate the footage between shots.

All of which does not engage the concern of the mighty Professional Golfers Association Tour, which says, no, he can’t use a golf cart lest the sanctity of its tournaments be profaned. If Casey Martin can’t walk they’re saying, in effect, that’s his problem. So there.

Whatever happened to compassion and understanding and human concern and plain old sympathy? Don’t look for it in the PGA Tour, which is dedicated to protecting its tradition of no carts and is going to court in Eugene, Ore., on Feb. 2 to ask a federal judge to vacate the temporary injunction that enabled Martin to play in two Nike Tour events this month, and even win one.

With all the fervor of don’t-tread-on-me, the PGA Tour is battling to preserve its sacred way of life with no carts, even wheeling in its big wheels--Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus--to carry the fight for cartless golf. All of which is unseemly, with the two powerhouse icons of the game, hitherto nice guys, aligned against a stricken young man who plays their game in pain and shoots subpar golf sometimes, but is too physically impaired to walk the walk.

What would be the impact on the tour if a waiver were granted to Martin to permit his using a golf cart? No impact whatsoever, except a meaningless swipe at the tour’s no-cart tradition. Do the pros believe a horde of young golfers afflicted with poor Martin’s rare Klippel Trenaunay Weber syndrome will sweep down from every mountainside and demand tour credentials, with carts, thus creating a problem?

And the tour showed no class earlier this month when Martin, for all his handicaps, won the Lakeland Classic with a remarkable 19-under-par performance. The minor tournament netted him $40,500, about the same money a guy gets on the regular tour for finishing in a tie for 12th.

The PGA did not sound overjoyed in the official statement it issued. “We congratulate Casey Martin on his performance,” it began.

And then came the zinger.

” . . . the fact remains that Mr. Martin participated and won while using a cart under the terms of a court order.”

They were making Martin the Hester Prynne of pro golf, and all but hung a big “A” on the cart they permitted this golf adulteress to use. Of what they have showed lately, the PGA Tour could be called a big crybaby.

It sounds like a novel defense that the tour is using to convince a federal judge in Oregon that the Americans With Disabilities Act--used by Martin--does not apply to pro golf. It claims to come under the heading of the “private establishment” exception to the act. A more debatable plea was never offered. The pro tour a “private” anything? So private it is splattered over two networks every weekend, is followed by millions, boasts of its ratings and dishes up prizes sometimes worth a million bucks to a tournament winner. Golf is the fastest growing game in the world, golf magazines are surging like weeds, with golf courses multiplying.

When the tournaments broke all dollar records they came up with the Senior PGA Tour for the plus-50 members, who have proved such drawing cards that they often exceed the regular tour in TV ratings.

Oh, the senior tour permits those superannuated 50-plus pros to use carts without seeming to offend any of golf’s sacrosanct traditions. Nicklaus, the anti-cart man, is not above using them on the senior tour. And neither his game nor his sport seems contaminated.

And there’s something perplexing about Nicklaus’s outrage at the attempt by Martin to use a cart. Budding young pros playing in the Nicklaus Summer Tournament--the one he calls the Golden Bear Tour--are permitted to use carts. Horrors!