Friday, January 19, 2001
PGA needs to make exception for Martin
The doctor supposes the golfer is in constant pain. “Sharp and throbbing,” he suspects. The golfer probably has some arthritis, too, from all the compensating he has to do to get himself started and headed in the right direction.
It's not as if he'll ever get better. It's not as if there's a cure, or even a treatment. “A complex vascular malformation” is Dr. Richard Azizkhan's clinical appraisal of Casey Martin's condition, Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome. Dr. Azizkhan is surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital. He treats 35 patients with Klippel.
Blood doesn't move efficiently around Martin's bloated, damaged right leg. It pools. “The malformation is so extensive, it's
not correctable,” the doctor says of Martin's condition.
This is the man the PGA Tour is fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The PGA is going after a guy who finished 179th on its money list last year and who has never won one of its events, whose right leg on good days feels like a hammer to the head and swells like the Goodyear blimp. Who limps as if the whole world is tilted.
Who wants to ride a cart. Oh, the horror.
The PGA, you see, has rules. The rules say no carts. Unless you are an overweight, out-of-shape, cigar-smoking 60-year-old picking from the money tree that is the Senior PGA Tour. In that case, hop on.
“Any attempt to adjust the rules to compensate for a player's physical condition fundamentally alters the nature of the competition,” one of the Tour's lawyers stated in opening arguments Wednesday.
Lawyers lawyering always sound pompous. But never more than in this case.
Necessary to work
If this were just about Casey Martin, it'd still be a cause worth screaming for. Martin is not a golfer with a tweaked back or a trick knee. Martin is a golfer who can't do his job without a cart. As for the PGA's contention that walking is essential to the job:
Please explain Craig Stadler and John Daly, who have won major championships looking like bean-bag chairs. Offer a reason for two-time major champ Fuzzy Zoeller, who wears polyester on his body and a cigarette on his lip.
Golfers walk on God's own grass, carrying nothing heavier than their money clips. Spare me the heroism involved in walking.
But the case before the Supreme Court isn't about golf, or even about Casey Martin. It's about the rights of disabled people to follow their dreams like everyone else.
Good player
Martin is not some scratch-playing hack fresh off a mini-tour. He's a player good enough to have qualified for the best tour in the world. He earned his spot. If you've followed him at all these last few years, you'll know Martin doesn't want pity. He doesn't want attention. He just wants what we all want: a fair shake.
If the PGA wants to preserve its right to make its own rules, fine. But rules without compassion are no better than tyranny.
Change this one.
Martin's right leg could explode with his next false step. He could be walking down a fairway, trip on a sprinkler head and snap his leg so severely, it would have to be amputated.
This is highly unlikely, Dr. Azizkhan says. So are holes-in-one.
Wonder if the self-righteous PGA would want that blood on its hands.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513) 768-8454.
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