Martin Is Scrambling to Keep Dream Alive

The cameras aren’t as prevalent, but the visions remain.

There are the visions of Casey Martin, caddie in tow, trudging up a ramp toward the putting green. Visions of Martin pulling himself laboriously out of his cart to hit another shot. Visions of Martin playing in front of the Buy.com Tour version of a Tiger Woods gallery, which is to say more people than this tour is used to drawing.

And visions such as the one Patrick Burke saw while playing a Buy.com Tour round with Martin earlier this season--a father following the pair around a golf course pushing his wheelchair-bound son.

“If they would have videotaped that and put it in court, the case would have been over in 15 minutes,” said Burke, the former Citrus College standout and PGA Tour player. “I mean, that kid was in heaven watching him. He has one of the biggest crowds out here. You look over the crowds and when you see a big crowd, it’s either a local guy or it’s Casey.”

Whatever crowd Martin draws this week will look smaller milling around Empire Lakes Golf Course, a links-style course plopped in the middle of an industrial park just north of Interstate 10. It is hosting the Buy.com Tour’s Inland Empire Open beginning today.

Based on what Martin has done this season, the fans should get there early.

Martin has banked $15,826, putting him 138th on the money list with two full-field events remaining after this week. Hehas missed the cut in nine of his 18 Buy.com Tour events, including a spring stretch of five missed cuts in six events.

In the middle of that was the May 29 Supreme Court decision allowing Martin to ride a cart on tour. That ended a 31/2-year legal odyssey that turned Martin from soft-spoken All-American at Stanford --where he was a teammate of Woods and PGA Tour golfer Notah Begay III--to media curiosity/legal pioneer to struggling pro golfer trying to keep his spot on the developmental tour.

“It would [stink] to go through what I had to go through to get here, and then not play well enough to keep my job,” he said in the players’ dining room at Empire Lakes. “I try not to think about it, but it’s a reality.”

The reality of his situation is not much different than what it was before he became an entry in legal case books. Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome--the degenerative circulatory disease that forces blood to pool in Martin’s right leg, inflicts a limp on him and prohibits him from walking 18 holes--may be taking its toll on his once-considerable game.

In Omaha last month, en route to shooting a 79, Martin stepped in a hole. His weakened leg buckled, pain shot through his entire lower body and he realized one thing.

“I’d been out there for a month and I was playing bad. I have to get out of here,” he said. “I withdrew. I can’t ever remember doing that. I never do that, it’s not normal, but I had to save my leg.”

Saving his game means fixing one simple problem. Martin is not hitting it straight (he’s 103rd on the Buy.com Tour in driving accuracy), meaning he’s having a hard time finding greens (95th). Moving down the fairway from tee to green, that means he’s not setting himself up for birdie putts (108th).

On the Buy.com Tour--which is so Darwinian that shooting 14 under par, as Martin did in Texas last month, equals a 20th-place finish--that means a lot of mediocre performances and missed cuts.

“It’s certainly been frustrating. If you want one word, that’s the word I’d use,” he said.

“I haven’t played very well for a while, and when you don’t play well you want to practice more and correct it. I spent more time on the range than I normally do and my leg started to feel the pain. I said I can’t keep doing this, so I took some time off and didn’t worry about my game. “I’m playing OK right now. Not great, but well enough to turn it around. My leg’s coming around a little bit since I haven’t been practicing as much. Normally, I’d go and hit a few balls and go play and that would be it.”

The impetus for this didn’t come from Martin’s game as much as his leg and a visit with his Oregon-based doctor, Don Jones, who told Martin to put the clubs down.

“I’ll stop trying so hard and take it easy. I don’t know if what he said was an out,” Martin said.

“My nature is to get after it and find out what’s going on. It’s hard to lay off ... but I’ve forced myself to do it.”

Martin still has visions of returning to the PGA Tour, where he played the 2000 season. Meanwhile, a new gallery of curious fans this week, will see someone who has come to grips with the attention his situation created.

“People say ‘Is all the attention because of the cart?’ No, it’s because he’s not a jerk,” Burke said.

The camera hordes have disappeared, but Martin’s desire has not.

“I’m going to keep pursuing golf. There have been times when I thought that maybe I should do something else because this hasn’t been a whole lot of fun,” he said. “But I’m not quite there yet. I still think I’ve got some good golf left in me.”