Sports Justice: The Law and the Business of Sports

Chapter 2: Swing for the Green, If You Can

 SWINGßFORßTHEßGREEN ßIFßYOUßCANß THEßRIGHTSßOFßDISABLEDßATHLETES It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans. robert lynd In our opinion, walking is better than golf. drs. paul & patricia bragg • • • previous page Casey Martin was a splendid professional golfer who played at the highest levels of the game until a rare and painful degenerative condition forced him to use a cart. ap Photo / Harry Cabluck The game of golf can be the epitome of human frustration. Unlike bowling, our nation’s most popular participation sport, no one ever shoots the equivalent of a 300 game in golf. No golfer ever pitches a perfect game, like Don Larsen for the Yankees in the 1956 World Series. Your goal in golf is to beat par by as many strokes as you can, but everyone—even Tiger Woods—misses a shot and bogeys a hole or two (or more). Intended as a tranquil and pastoral pastime, golf baffles both the duffer and the pro. Winston Churchill, a man who knew how to stay the course in the face of terrible odds, explained it best: “Golf is a game whose aim it is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” The difficulties of the game for the casual player are multiplied for the professional, matched against skilled rivals with his or her livelihood at stake. For those who master the hazards and avoid slicing the dimpled white ball into the ubiquitous sand traps, golf can be a lucrative endeavor with multimillion-dollar payouts and endorsement deals that can escalate a player’s annual earnings to eight figures or more. For others, it is nothing more than a weekend frustration or a career aspiration unfulfilled. As a disabled youngster, Casey Martin dreamed of being a star professional on the links. He was a terrific amateur golfer growing up in Oregon. As a teenager, he fought the courses of the Northwest, sometimes wearing a splint on his right leg, but he won numerous trophies. As his reputation grew, so too did the effects of his physical disability. Martin has KlippelTrenaunay -Weber syndrome (ktw), a very rare birth defect that was not diagnosed until he was five years old. The valves in the veins of his right leg never close. Blood drains back down his leg when he is standing and walking , pooling in his lower leg and causing swelling. Now in his mid-thirties, Martin’s right tibia has become increasingly brittle. The pain is constant, his leg continues to degenerate, and there is no known cure. By the time Martin was ready to participate in the game as a professional , he could not walk the golf course. Martin was a brilliant golfer with a serious physical impairment. His upper body rotation powered drives deep down the fairway; his approach shots to the green were superb; his Swing for the Green, If You Can • • • 31 putting, at least on a good day, made him a champion. The degenerative condition in his right leg, however, caused him such pain that, without the assistance of a golf cart, he could not walk the course and compete in the game he loved—the game that he wanted to play as a professional. Martin vowed that he would not play a course using a golf cart unless he absolutely had to. He agreed that walking was better, until he could no longer walk. His only deficiency, he felt, was in “getting to the game” where he could make his shots. He simply could not walk the five-mile course. Martin wasn’t injured. He was disabled, and his condition was degenerative. Casey Martin may have been one of a kind: an athlete who could play all aspects of his sport with professional proficiency, but who was unable to follow the customary, but certainly not uniform, practice of walking the course. That deficiency could have been easily remedied. At many tournaments , able-bodied professional golfers use golf carts to move from tee to fairway, then on to the putting green. If Martin could be assured the use of a cart, he could be a professional golfer, at least until ktw syndrome affected his ability to swing a golf club. Eventually, Martin knew, his leg would have to be amputated. Reluctantly, Casey...