Much Is Riding on Wheels of Justice

You could say the PGA Tour walked right into this one. The lawsuit disabled golfer Casey Martin brought against the tour seeking to use a golf cart to compete on the Nike Tour is scheduled to be heard beginning Feb. 2 in a courtroom in his hometown of Eugene, Ore.

The tour has asked for a summary dismissal, a ruling that could come today. But no matter what U.S. Magistrate Tom Coffin decides once the case does get to court as expected, it’s bound to be controversial.

Would a Martin victory shake the tradition-bound PGA Tour down to its foundation, cause havoc on the course, give cart riders a competitive advantage and forever tilt the playing field?

Or would a PGA Tour victory run contrary to the Americans With Disabilities Act, send a signal to the handicapped that they’re not welcome in golf and tarnish the tour’s public-relations effort to bring the game to all people?

It’s all about four wheels. Riding carts are banned at all PGA Tour and Nike Tour events but permitted on the Senior PGA Tour, which is for players 50 and older.

Jack Nicklaus said if the PGA Tour loses and carts are permitted on all the tours, it clearly will have a negative effect on golf.

“I’m not a lawyer, so I look at it from what I think makes common sense, and common sense tells me we would have a disaster on our hands,” Nicklaus said. “I think we would lose the game of golf forever in the way that we know it.”

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) doesn’t see it that way. Harkin was the lead sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was signed into law in 1990. The law requires “reasonable accommodations” for people with handicaps.

“Golf has changed in my adult lifetime,” Harkin said. “It’s opened up to more people and barriers have been broken. It’s my feeling that the PGA [Tour] should not hinder this progress with a barrier that would keep Martin and millions of other Americans with disabilities from playing.”

Harkin emphasized that the ADA requires reasonable modifications to rules to put people on an even playing field.

“It doesn’t require that Casey Martin be given an advantage,” he said. “Is Casey getting an advantage from using a cart? I don’t believe he is.”

Martin, 25, is a former Stanford golfer who has Klippel Trenaunay Weber Syndrome, a congenital circulatory condition in which blood that flows down his right leg collects in a pool and has difficulty flowing back. As a result, the condition causes swelling. Hemorrhaging has led to the deterioration of bone in his lower leg and increased the chance that he could break his tibia. Amputation below his knee is considered a possibility at some time.

Coffin issued an injunction in December that ordered the PGA Tour to accommodate Martin’s physical condition, allowing him to use a cart in the finals of the PGA Tour qualifying school. Carts are allowed in the first two rounds of qualifying school to speed up play, but not in subsequent rounds to bring the competition in line with regular tour conditions.

Martin failed to get his PGA Tour card, but his 46th-place finish was good enough for an exemption to play the Nike Tour. The tour granted Martin permission to use a cart in the first two Nike events. He won the first one, at Lakeland, Fla., but missed the cut in his second.

After he rode to victory in the Lakeland Classic, Martin said the argument about walking during play is a simple one. He conceded that walking is part of the tradition of golf, but it is not written as part of the rule book.

“When the commentators go to comment on golf, they don’t comment on how well someone walks. . . . It’s about hitting the golf shots,” he told reporters. “Tradition’s great, but wouldn’t you want to bend tradition to help someone with a disability?”

Many say no. While there is an overwhelming sentiment of admiration for Martin’s courage among his peers and the golf establishment, most opposition to Martin’s position centers on whether riding carts is an advantage and whether the PGA Tour has the right to make its own rules to protect the integrity of its competition.

Some PGA Tour officials said last week that the tour is a private organization not covered by the ADA. Harkin disagreed and said the court will decide that issue.

Nicklaus said there is a much bigger issue.

“I am very sympathetic for Casey Martin. However, I very much believe to play the sport you have to have the physical part of it too. I think that if I were allowed to use a cart, I would be able to compete much better on regular tour events simply because my [arthritic] hip just wears out on me. That is a disability, but I am not going to ride a cart nor have I ridden a cart on the senior tour yet.

“Plus the fact that how could you possibly have carts all over a golf course with the amount of gallery that you have? How could you make that work? Plus the fact that how do you determine if a person’s disability is going to allow him to have a cart? It is very discriminatory. It may be discriminatory against Casey at this point, but it would be very discriminatory against all the other players. I have a lot of sympathy for Casey. Unfortunately, I am going to have to go the other way.”

Traditionalists point out that Ben Hogan would have been helped if he had been able to ride a cart when he came back after a near-fatal car crash. Johnny Miller could have played more with his bad knees. Jose Maria Olazabal missed nearly two years of play because of a chronic foot ailment. And Steve Lamontagne, who lost to Martin by one shot at Lakeland, walked and played despite a painful ingrown toenail that required Novocain shots and, finally, removal of the toenail.

It’s a complicated, divisive issue, where compassion and tradition meet in a head-on collision on the playing field of a professional sport in which fair play and sportsmanship are still values that mean something.

Like everyone else involved, Arnold Palmer tried to sort it out. Palmer gave a deposition in the Martin case and said he is in Martin’s corner. But he also said that the PGA Tour needs to be able to make its own rules.

“If you’re allowed to ride golf carts and play golf in tournaments, where do you stop?” Palmer said. “I likened it to a scenario in football where a quarterback might have some physical disability, but he can take the ball from center and throw it. But you don’t allow anyone to tackle him.

“I feel strongly that is kind of the way we’re going. I’ve heard all kinds of arguments. It isn’t golf carts, particularly, it’s the entire scenario of making the rules of the game and enforcing them. I guess that’s the end of my story.”