The way some guys talk, you'd think they're going from mortal combat to recliners and masseuses on every tee box. But that's pretty much the way it's been from the beginning with this case. As We Know It. As if golf were sporting perfection itself. As if the inviolate rules of competition were handed down on stone tablets from God to the Scots to Bobby Jones to Nicklaus.
Golf is a great game, one of the best games, but also an embarrassingly stiff-necked game at times.
Like the decades it spent as a whites-only enclave. And like this protracted fight with Casey Martin. You probably know the background. A degenerative circulatory disorder has severely inhibited Martin's use of his right leg, so in 1997 he sued the PGA Tour, saying the Americans with Disabilities Act gives him the right to use a cart during tour events. The tour, in a suicidally stubborn and pitiless move, opposed Martin clear to the highest court in the land.