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According to many critics, the U.S. Supreme Court really botched it last week with its ruling in the Casey Martin case.
Martin is a professional golfer who suffers from a degenerative circulation condition called Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome. The more he walks, the more risk he runs of a fracture or hemorrhage in his right leg, with amputation a possibility.
So, he wanted to use a cart to get around in tournaments. The Professional Golfers Association said he couldn't, since the fatigue from walking four or five miles was an integral part of the game, and allowing one player to use a cart would change the fundamental nature of the sport.
In my view, the fundamental nature of golf is that it provides a convenient setting for rich white guys to get together to exchange sexist remarks, complain about uppity employees, and conspire to fix prices, all the while claiming that they're getting wholesome outdoor exercise.
Or, as the poet Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn observed in
1915: The golf links lie so near the mill, That almost
every day, The laboring children can look out, And watch
the men at play.
However, in light of the sport's popularity, such views are not widely shared, and so a more mainstream analysis is in order.
Back to Martin and the PGA. He sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, arguing that the PGA was obliged to offer a reasonable accommodation to him.
The PGA argued that the ADA required only that golf courses offer reasonable access to disabled spectators, not to disabled golfers. The appeals that went clear to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week ruled in Martin's favor.
The critics seem to fear the courts will soon require
major-league baseball to accommodate would-be sluggers who
suffer from the well-known can't hit the curve ball
disability by letting them swing at balls perched on
little-kid-league tees, or that those of us who are
height-disadvantaged might get to use stepstools or stilts
if we wanted to play in the NBA.
As much as I'd like to join this chorus about an arrogant judiciary -- wasn't deciding a presidential election enough for this Supreme Court? -- I am convinced that the court ruled properly here.
At issue is the essential nature
of the activity,
and the PGA argued that walking the course is part of the
fundamental nature of golf.
But if that were the case, why are golf carts allowed on any course? Are the duffers who ride from tee to shining tee at the municipal course or the country club playing some different sport, one that looks like golf but really isn't?
One could argue that many sports require professionals, especially at the top levels, to play under different conditions -- aluminum bats are common in baseball, for instance, but they're not allowed in major-league games.
And it is here that the PGA defies its own logic. The PGA permits carts in qualifying tournaments. It permits carts on the senior tour.
The rules of golf,
as promulgated by the U.S.
Golf Association, have an optional provision that allow a
tournament organizer to require walking: If it is
desired to require players to walk in a competition, the
following condition is suggested: Players shall walk at all
times during a stipulated round.
But the PGA doesn't exercise that option. Its
tournament rules provide that Players shall walk at all
times during a stipulated round unless permitted to ride by
the PGA Tour Rules Committee.
In other words, the PGA can't really believe that carts destroy the fundamental nature of tournament golf competition, or it would totally forbid them, rather than putting carts at the discretion of a committee.
The PGA had a lame argument, belied by its own policies and actions, about the fundamental nature of golf. Little wonder that a federal district court and a federal appeals court, as well as the supreme court, agreed with Martin.
The PGA was not acting to protect the integrity the game -- it was just acting in an arbitrary way, and its tour rules committee could have allowed Martin to use a cart without changing a single rule.
Indeed, the only solid argument I could find that
walking is integral to golf is the Mark Twain definition of
golf as a good walk spoiled.
However, further research revealed that scholars have never been able to find this in Twain's works, and that no one has been able to pin down its origin with any certainty.
And if you can't even quote Mark Twain to support your case, you don't have a case.
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