CASEY Martin's efforts to obtain the use of a cart while playing in professional golf tournaments made their way to the United States Supreme Court last week. Regardless of the high court's decision, the Martin saga has reflected the tragedies that may develop from a needless and compulsive adherence to tradition.
Since his birth, Martin has been afflicted by a condition known as Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome. The syndrome inhibits blood flow to Martin's right leg, causing extreme pain and difficulty in walking.
Throughout his high school and collegiate life, Martin played golf at a premiere level, ranking second on the Stanford team with Tiger Woods. However, as Martin transitioned from college to the professional tour, his condition worsened, and the pain increased.
As walking a round of golf takes miles, the pain experienced from Martin's condition forced him to take to riding in a cart when playing professionally. The lower-level Nike Tour allowed Martin the use of a cart during play. However, when Martin completed the rigorous tests necessary to move into the elite PGA Tour, he found that he and his cart would not be welcome. He sued to use the cart, citing the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The PGA has made two basic arguments as to its refusal to allow Martin the use of a cart. First, it asserts that, as a private athletic organization, it has the right to set its own rules for how to play its game. In much the same way that Major League Baseball decides whether players use wooden or aluminum bats, the PGA has a right to say that golfers must walk an entire tournament.
Taken on its face, this argument has a great deal of legal merit to it. The court has held numerous times that private organizations may set rules for membership and participation. The Boy Scouts of America and their court-sanctioned exclusion of gay scoutmasters serve as a well-known example.
While one may not like the PGA's rationale, one may see how the Court might easily support its right to keep Martin out of a cart. However, regardless of the Court's actions, one should consider the PGA's primary reason for refusing Martin a cart: tradition. Going to the sport's inception, professional golfers have walked the courses they have played. Oftentimes, the long distances and the weather conditions have affected the quality of shots taken by the athletes, making a golfer's conditioning an element of his success or failure.
However, in arguing that one permanently-disabled individual should not be allowed a cart, the PGA has ignored the countless other alterations that have taken place in the arena of golf and sports in general.
In the days since Ben Hogan and Sam Snead used to drive feather-stuffed balls using wooden clubs, players now hit aerodynamic balls with oversized titanium drivers onto perfectly-manicured landscapes. More importantly, true adherence to the original traditions of golf - Bagger Vance excluded - would bar the Tiger Woods of the world from playing the game at all on the basis of race.
A fundamental aspect of the PGA's adherence to tradition centers on the claim that walking comprises a critical element of the game. For a person accustomed to walking everywhere in life, walking four miles in a day would test one's endurance.
However, for one such as Mr. Martin - one who must still walk in excruciating pain from the cart to the ball and back hundreds of times in a tournament - his endurance is tested arguably to a greater degree by walking considerably shorter distances. The fact that Martin has not generally played well in the latter rounds in a number of tournaments would suggest his endurance is tested even with the cart.
Those opposed to allowing Martin a cart also throw out a slippery slope argument. They ask how the PGA may decide who next would get to ride. As Virginia Men's Golf Coach Mike Moraghan related, the NCAA has a working protocol for deciding if an athlete deserves the use of a cart. The athlete submits medical evidence of a permanent disability. A qualified subcommittee makes a case-by-case decision, and the sanctity of walking remains intact for the 99 percent of athletes who do not have permanent disabilities.
This system would work for the PGA. It would allow persons like Martin the opportunity to prove whether or not they can perform at a championship level. It would give people with similar disabilities real success stories and role models to emulate and consider when facing their own challenges. From the PGA's perspective, it would allow it to keep control of its own internal affairs.
Instead, by refusing to consider granting one exception to one talented athlete, the PGA is bringing the potential for an adverse federal court ruling on its head. In acting in such a stubborn fashion, it is begging an outside entity to make decisions on the rules of the game it claims are so precious. Blind adherence to tradition benefits neither party in this conflict. Martin should have his cart.
(Seth Wood's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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