Time running out for Casey Martin

Between the debates on Augusta National Golf Course and Pete Rose, sports' and society's sincerest cause swung his clubs in the California desert over the weekend, resolved to restore his game to PGA Tour status and his struggle to a nation's consciousness. Casey Martin missed the qualifying school cut, confessing Wednesday that the pain of playing golf had never been so excruciating in his right leg, that the late double-bogeys on Monday afternoon had never been so heartbreaking.

"In a perfect world, I would be out there playing so well that I'd be hearing people griping that I've got an advantage because of the cart," Martin said by telephone from his Eugene, Ore., home. "But I'm in the background now. I haven't played well for a long time.

"... But I would still rather deal with the pain than throw in the towel. I'm not giving up."

At once, Casey Martin, 30, is sad and inspiring, tragic and triumphant. He's still a most important issue lost in a most congested time. As Rose and Bud Selig, Hootie Johnson and Martha Burk are sparring partners causing us to separate the cause from the contemptible combatants, Martin is still the sincere and sympathetic face of his struggle. Not so long ago, Martin's march to justice was the biggest sports story in the nation.

Everyone didn't agree that the Americans with the Disabilities Act gave Martin the right to use a cart on the PGA Tour, but they were compelled to admire the courage and character of the kid dragging that right leg shot to shot, hole to hole.

Only now, his legs don't get better. Just worse. Time is running out. Of course, he has a defect called Klippel Trenaunay Weber Syndrome, where blood flows into his leg but doesn't flow out. It leaves his leg with surreal swelling, internal bleeding, and pain the rest of us probably couldn't understand unless we pounded our own leg with a hammer for 20 minutes a day.

For seven days, the two courses used for the tournament in La Quinta, Calif., tried Martin to his core. "The severity around the greens, the uneven stances, wore my legs out," Martin said. "I had more pain at the end of the week than I've ever had in the past."

After two years of missing cuts on the Buy.com Tour, there was Martin playing his best golf in the longest time in Sunday's final round until double-bogeys on No. 12 and No. 13 left him out of the top 35 finishers, out of his Tour card. He was 117th on the Buy.com earnings list for 2002, winning $30,218. This could barely cover his traveling expenses to Dayton and Richmond and Odessa, Texas, all the glamorous stops on the bush-league tour. Another year out of sight, out of mind for Martin in 2003, another year to find his game before it's too late.

"I left this weekend very discouraged," Martin said. "All the disappointment from the last three years, and to falter like I did over the last nine holes at La Quinta ... it really hurt; even more than I thought it would."

The more Martin plays, the more it hurts. Eventually, the doctors could have to amputate. All the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Martin fought for the right to use a cart on tour, but it's sure harder and harder to practice for Q-School and those Buy.com events when it feels like someone is searing your leg with a branding iron.

"There's no window of time that I know for sure is left with my leg," he said. "Obviously, I don't have forever. I don't have the time others do. But when I was a senior in college, I didn't think I could make it this far. Even with the cart, it might end tomorrow or a long time from now. I'll keep playing until it's impossible."

Until he runs out of strength to chase the tournaments of his dreams, like the Masters. Martin has still never played Augusta National, where club president Johnson seldom sounded too thrilled with the prospect of a cart in the Masters. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court leaves Johnson with no choice to do the right thing on the Martin issue, the way it does on female membership.

"If you host a tournament that's one of the majors in the world, then you shouldn't have discriminatory practices," Martin said. "I do think they were eventually going to do it, but it's a pride and ego issue for Augusta now. But if you're going to host a major, you have to the right thing."

If Martin's Stanford teammate Tiger Woods takes too much grief for sitting out Augusta's debate on discrimination, Woods took too little for never supporting Martin's struggle with the golfing establishment. Nobody ever needed Woods to make threats of boycotts on his old roommate's behalf, but a thoughtful few words on the importance of inclusion within the PGA would've gone a long way toward easing Martin's journey.

"It always gets back to Tiger in some sense," Martin said Wednesday. "I'm not even going to answer the question about him."

Through it all, Martin has had to bear his own burden. This never changes for him. All those people believing the cart gave him an unfair advantage never understood Martin's rare skill, his rarer disease, nor his rarest of humanity. These stories transcending sports and society come and go, as disposable as the latest nugget of information spit out of the 24-hour news cycle. Casey Martin missed the cut in Q-School, leaving one of the most amazing athletes of his generation to suffer in silence for another long, painful summer of golf.

The story goes away, but his struggle never does.

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