Supreme Court Hews to the Rules

The Supreme Court justices sounded like sports fans as well as lawyers Wednesday as they debated which rules, if any, are absolutely fundamental to a sport.

At issue in the case of disabled golfer Casey Martin is whether walking an 18-hole course is fundamental to professional golf.

As lawyers, the justices regularly say the written rules must be followed, whether or not they make sense, and most of them took the same view during Wednesday’s oral argument.

“All sports rules are silly, aren’t they?” commented Justice Antonin Scalia, a baseball fan. The strike zone goes from the knees to the chest, he said, but it need not be so.

“You could say it’s from the hips to the eyes. But the rules are the rules. You can’t make exceptions for an individual,” Scalia added, neatly summing up the argument made by lawyers for the PGA Tour.

A ballplayer with “an excessively long torso” could not ask for a different strike zone, he said.

Martin, 28, sued the PGA Tour for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act when it refused to let him ride in a cart. Because of a circulatory disorder in his leg, Martin finds it painful to walk long distances. He argued golf is about skill in shot making, not walking, and he won in two lower courts.

But his prospects looked dim by the end of Wednesday’s argument, as most of the justices suggested that they believed sports authorities, not courts, can define the rules of the game.

Walking adds an element of “physical stress” to golf, said Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an avid golfer. Because of hills or heat and humidity, walking takes a toll on the golfers, so it can be seen “as an aspect of the competition,” she said.

In their brief, lawyers for the PGA Tour maintained that walking the 20 to 25 miles covered in the course of a four-day tournament is an essential aspect of competitive golf at the highest level. They cited the famous example of Ken Venturi, staggering in the heat of a Washington summer, as he walked the final fairways to win the 1964 U.S. Open.

“Players must walk during an actual competition on tour, and there have been no exceptions to that rule,” said the PGA Tour’s lawyer, H. Bartow Farr III.

Even the justices who might be inclined to take a liberal view of the anti-discrimination law said they were reluctant to second-guess sports authorities.

“A professional sport is entitled to define anything as fundamental” to the competition, said Justice David H. Souter, a long-distance runner in his spare time.

But Martin’s lawyer said his client, a former Stanford golf star, merely seeks a chance to play the game of golf under the same rules as other golfers.

Martin is not asking for a wider hole, a shorter course or a few strokes in a handicap, his lawyer Roy L. Reardon said. “Walking is not fundamental,” he said. “Casey Martin plays every single hole. [Allowing him to ride a cart] gives people like him a chance to get to the game.”

Reardon pointed out there are exceptions to the walking rule. When new players compete in the qualifying school, all of them are allowed to ride in carts, he noted.

The PGA Tour’s lawyer said that was a matter of “logistics.” There are not enough caddies to serve the hundreds of players at the qualifying school, he explained.

Doesn’t that undercut the argument that walking is essential, asked Justice John Paul Stevens, who still plays tennis at 80. “If logistics are a reason to justify a cart, why is a handicap not a reason to justify a cart?” he asked.

Farr, the PGA Tour lawyer, said the golf at the qualifying school is not the same as it is during an actual tournament. The walking rule is enforced for true tour events, he said.

Scalia added that the use of carts in qualifying tournaments proves nothing. “All it demonstrates is that you can play the game under different rules,” he said.

At one point in the argument, Justice Steven G. Breyer, who described himself as a lousy golfer, suggested major league baseball waived one of its rules for pitchers in the case of Jim Abbott, the former Angel pitcher who was born without a right hand.

But Scalia interrupted to say it is not true the rules were changed for Abbot. Some of his colleagues were as likely to misstate the rules of baseball as golf, “and the former would be a much greater sin.”

“Wait a minute,” O’Connor interjected, speaking up for the golfers.

Martin was in the courtroom to hear Wednesday’s argument, but he will probably have to wait several months to hear the outcome in the case of PGA Tour vs. Martin, 00-24.

Last year, Martin played in 29 tournaments on the PGA Tour, but won only $143,000, putting him 179th on the money list.

Only the top 125 players retain their regular exemption to play tour events, but he can continue to play regularly on the Buy.com Tour.

*

DARK HORSES: It’s easy to pick Tiger Woods to win every week, but who will rise up to challenge him? Thomas Bonk’s column, D10