Martin Almost Has Another Run-In Involving a Golf Cart

The most interesting thing that happened to Casey Martin wasn’t the 72 he shot in Saturday’s third round of the Nike Greater Austin Open.

No, it’s the fact that he nearly got run over by a . . . golf cart. And don’t you know that would have sent the Irony Meter screaming off the chart.

As it turned out, Martin was not injured in the cart incident, which happened when he was playing the 18th hole. The ball on Martin’s second shot rolled underneath a grandstand and when marshals asked for a path to be cleared, the driver of a Golf Channel cart sent the cart rolling backward because it had been left in reverse when it was parked.

A volunteer was slightly bumped by the cart before it stopped about a foot away from Martin.

“It did scare me,” Martin said. “That was pretty close. The cart just happened to be left in reverse. The guy really felt awful about it. It was just a mistake.”

Martin said the cart did not have a beeper that sounds when the transmission is in reverse.

“Now I know why they put beepers in those things,” he said.

Except for that incident, Martin’s day was fairly average. His par round put him at six-under 210 and in a nine-way tie for 11th, six shots behind the three co-leaders.

Gene Sauers, Michael Allen and Charlie Rymer--all former PGA touring pros--begin today tied for the lead in this $225,000 event at 12-under 204.

Martin found bunkers on two of his first three holes and bogeyed both of them. He recovered with a birdie on No. 5 when he chipped in and pulled back even for the day when he sank a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 7. But for most of the way, Martin never really got the ball close enough to the hole to score.

He wasn’t happy with his driver, which he hit only three times, and said he found himself leaning ahead of the ball too often.

Whether his game was rusty or he was tired, deflated, fried from the attention or anything else, Martin isn’t sure. But he is fairly certain he won’t win his first tournament since winning a court suit permitting him to ride a cart while playing the Nike Tour.

“The reality to winning here, it’s not likely,” he said. “Six shots back, I’m still mathematically in it, but with so many great players out here, I have a hard time seeing it.”

The next three Nike Tour events Martin has entered are at Monterrey, Mexico, and at Lafayette and Shreveport in Louisiana. By then, he hopes some of the media attention will have quieted down.

If Martin does win a second Nike event, chances are he’s going to duplicate this spirited media experience, perhaps on an even greater level. Players with three Nike Tour wins in one year are immediately exempt to play the PGA Tour. So if Martin is in a situation where he is carrying two victories with him in his cart, he again is going to find himself under the media microscope.

“I don’t know how it could be much more,” he said. “I would think this would be about max.”

Not all the media has brought friendly messages. Martin said he found in his locker Saturday a copy of a recent Times story from the Nissan Open on Scott Verplank. In the story, Verplank was adamant that golfers should not ride carts and Martin seemed upset by the tone of Verplank’s position in the article and that whoever put it in his locker did so anonymously.

Meanwhile, Martin’s media following began to thin out. Only a couple of dozen reporters walked his third round with him. But media-wise, this week will be busy when he is in New York for a photo shoot, a meeting with sponsor Hartford Life and an appearance on the “Today” show.

“It’s never gonna end!” Martin said in mock horror.

Martin canceled without explanation a planned Tuesday examination by a Chicago doctor who had expressed interest in Martin’s circulatory disorder that makes it difficult to walk without pain.

Instead, it’s off to New York for more and more media.

“I’m exhausted,” he said. “I’m dealing with a lot of extra stuff. I don’t know if it’s all physical, but I’m tired.”