Fourteen years after his use of a cart in the 1998 US Open helped make him a lightning rod for controversy, Casey Martin will again test his game against golf’s best at The Olympic Club.
Martin, now 40 and the golf coach at the University of Oregon, came through qualifying to book his spot in the second major championship of the year.
Although he rarely plays full rounds of golf nowadays, Martin said the fact that the Open was returning to Olympic’s Lake Course stirred him to attempt to qualify.
“I had a wonderful experience here in ’98 and I thought it would be fun to try to maybe get back,” Martin said. “And here I am.”
Once again, Martin will use a golf cart to negotiate the course, which now plays to 7,170 yards and a par of 70.
He was born with a painful circulatory disorder that affects his right leg, which he could still lose one day to amputation.
“I think I’m going to keep it as long as something drastic doesn’t happen,” Martin said.
“That’s always been the fear. It’s still pretty fragile.”
Martin, a onetime Stanford University teammate of 14-time major champion Tiger Woods, made history in 1997 when he filed a federal lawsuit against the US PGA Tour for the right to use a cart in competition.
After a six-day trial the following year, a judge ruled the tour failed to validate its stand that waiving the must-walk rule would fundamentally alter competition.
The following year, Martin qualified for the US Open, and the debate followed him there, although he said the US Golf Association never tried to block his participation.
Martin said he recalled playing a practice round with Woods in 1998, and all the “hoopla” that entailed.
“Really what I remember is just the difficulty and the challenge mentally and physically of a golf course like this,” he said.
“Then just the thrills. I made some putts that week, hit some shots. To hear the roar of the crowd like that – you don’t really get that on the mini-tours or the Nationwide Tour.
“You only get that at the really big tournaments.”
But his appearance on the game’s biggest stage put his disability – and the question of whether it was fair for him to use a cart – in the spotlight.
Golf greats Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus had both given depositions backing the tour in the lawsuit, with plenty of big-name golfers chiming in to insist that walking 18 holes was part of the test of a tournament round.
Nicklaus worried that an exception for Martin would bring a flood of requests for cart waivers, something that has not materialised.
Paul Azinger, who opposed Martin’s use of a cart back in the 1990s, now says simply, “I was mistaken”.
“I don’t like to be the centre of controversy and it kind of followed me for a long time there,” said Martin, whose case against the US PGA Tour eventually went to the Supreme Court.
“It’s not my nature to necessarily seek that out. I am hopeful the way that I conduct myself and the way I play that the controversy fades…
“There certainly have been negative stories or there’s controversy,” Martin added.
“I try to just feel fortunate that there’s a lot of people that are pulling for me.”
Martin, who finished equal 23rd in the 1998 Open, a stroke behind Woods, said he hoped the lasting impression people took from his participation is of “somebody just trying to pursue their dreams like anybody else.”
