Could Martin’s case have been avoided?
A lawyer by training, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem was in his fourth year on the job when Casey Martin sued the tour after it turned down his 1997 request, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to use a golf cart in competition. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in Martin’s favor in 2001, the tour had lost in three different courts and taken a beating in the court of public opinion.
“I don’t have any regrets,” Finchem said recently. “I think we handled it right. I think we had to make the case we made.”
The stars — namely Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer — were aligned with the tour and most of its members in opposition to granting a cart to Martin.
To a man, players and officials said their stance was not at all against Martin, but all for asserting walking as fundamental to golf at its highest level and ensuring no exceptions to tour rules for all competitors. Furthermore, they said, allowing a cart for any player would mean granting an unfair advantage and opening a Pandora’s box of potential cart requests from players with varying degrees of ailments.
“The tour didn’t do it to be difficult or obstreperous, but to demonstrate it would maintain the integrity of the sport’s competitions,” said attorney William Maledon, who represented the tour in the District Court trial and in the appeal. “As difficult as this was for everybody, this truly was a matter of principle.”
Before Martin’s attorney, William Wiswall, filed suit, he said he sent the tour a videotape and other evidence of Martin’s disability, a debilitating and incurable circulatory disease called Klippel Trenaunay Weber syndrome that made walking the golf course perilous and prohibitive.
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