WALK THE WALK, JOHN!
PGA wrong to let Daly ride at Bethpage
John Daly is supposed to represent the everyman golfer. The real everyman can’t ride a cart on Bethpage Black; it’s walking-only. But that’s what the PGA of America will allow Daly to do at this weekend’s PGA Championship. Grip it and hit the accelerator. And it’s wrong. John Daly has been good for golf, most of the time. He’s occasionally acted like a bull in a china shop. Overall, though, he’s a crowd-pleaser who brought fans into the game. And he earned his way into the field with a rags-to-riches win at the 1991 PGA at Crooked Stick. But by agreeing to Daly’s appeal under the Americans with Disabilities Act — the same request the USGA rejected at last year’s U.S. Senior Open — the PGA is setting a bad precedent.
Daly has osteoarthritis in his right knee, a condition that affects millions of Americans. He regularly rides a cart on the Champions Tour, where the practice is allowed so fans can see the game’s past greats.
“I can’t walk more than six holes before the whole knee swells up,” Daly told the Associated Press. “And then I can’t go anymore.”
Daly said he can walk up a hill but not down one. But walking is part of golf and while Daly isn’t seeking a competitive advantage — he just wants to play — it’s an even bigger part of the game this week at Bethpage Black.
The course is physically demanding, as any public golfer who has lugged his bag around it knows. By the last stretch of brutal holes, it can take your legs away. And while professional golfers are in a lot better shape than the weekend hacker, and not carrying their own bags, even they came off the Black Course at the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens exhausted.
The ADA considers osteoarthritis a disability, so Daly has legal standing. Casey Martin was the last player to use a cart during a major, at the 2012 U.S. Open. Martin won that right in a fight against the PGA that went all the way to the Supreme Court, in a case he won. The then-29-year-old Martin was born with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome, which cut off blood flow to his lower right leg, causing it to wither.
Martin, by the way, thinks the PGA made the right call.
Still, Daly was not born with his disability. He developed it, and some would suggest that the abuse he’s put his body through didn’t help. Significantly, the USGA’s doctors reviewed Daly’s medical records last year and determined his condition wasn’t severe enough to merit riding a cart. They did allow Scott Verplank to drive at the Senior Open in 2017 because of how his diabetes affected his feet.
Again, that was a senior tournament. Verplank wasn’t competing against the best players in the world. Bill Parcells once said “God takes it away” about his older Giants reaching retirement age. That’s just the way it is.
Is Daly’s condition any different than any injury that creates a temporary disability? Should Tiger Woods, for instance, have been afforded a cart during the 2008 U.S. Open, which he won playing on a broken leg? Should Jack Nicklaus have been allowed to ride while battling a degenerative hip late in his career? It doesn’t matter, because neither would have wanted the assistance.
At 53, Daly is younger than both Vijay Singh, 56, and Davis Love III, 55, who are both walking.
Currently ranked 1,836th in the world, Daly isn’t going to make the cut even with his cart. He hasn’t made a cut in a major since the 2012 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course at Kiawah, where he finished in a tie for 12th. The PGA and the British Open are the only two that he can qualify for by virtue of his past championship. It will be interesting to see how the R&A would rule if he appeals for a cart, especially in 2021 when the Open is played at St. Andrews, scene of his 1995 victory.
There’s even a chance that Daly withdraws before he tees it up Thursday at 12:54 with former champs Y.E. Yang and Rich Beem. He pulled out of the first senior major, last week’s The Regions Tradition, after experiencing dizzy spells. If he does play, though, he’ll be a sideshow for at least two days. Daly’s been one before, you might remember, just for different reasons.
Daly’s chief concern is the reaction from the same New York galleries that infamously taunted Sergio Garcia for his waggles in 2002. “I hope I don’t get a lot of grief from the fans,” he said.
He won’t. They’ll be cheering him on and oohing every time he launches one off the tee. After all, he is a sympathetic figure, and moreso now.
He is the everyman golfer and, come next Monday, none of them can ride.