Martin qualifies:
Casey Martin is returning to the Olympic Club for another U.S. Open.
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Casey Martin and his cart are headed back to the Olympic Club for the U.S. Open.
Martin, who successfully sued for the right to ride a cart because of a rare circulatory disorder in his right leg, earned a spot in the U.S. Open on Monday night when he holed a 5-foot par putt in darkness on the final hole at Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell, Ore.
Martin, 40, now the golf coach at Oregon, posted a 36-hole score of 138. Had he missed, he would have been in a three-man playoff for two spots.
He had planned on going to North Carolina next week to watch recruits in a junior tournament.
“This is a little better,” Martin told the Golf Channel.
Martin, a teammate of Tiger Woods at Stanford, has Klippel-TrenaunayWeber syndrome, a circulatory disorder that causes severe pain and makes it virtually impossible for him to walk 18 holes. Martin sued the PGA Tour and won the right to use a cart in 1998, and the USGA allowed him to use it at Olympic in 1998 when he qualified for the Open. He tied for 23rd.
Martin earned his way onto the PGA Tour in 1999. He failed to keep his PGA Tour card after one year, but with the Open returning to Olympic, and a qualifying site so close to home, he decided to give it a try.
“I was just going to play golf,” he said. “And if I got hot, great.”
Martin opened with a 69 over the first round, and he started to think this was in the cards on the eighth hole. He couldn’t find an errant tee shot, but just when he was about to go back to the tee to play his third shot, his caddie found the mud-covered ball in the rough. Martin wound up chipping in from 30 yards for birdie after what had looked like a sure double bogey.
He stumbled coming in with bogeys on the 16th and 17th, yet he insisted on finishing in the dark because he was exhausted from the NCAAs last week.
“I wanted to get it done because I need to sleep,” he said. “I’m exhausted. I really just wanted to rest. I should not have putted, but I’m very glad I did.”
In other qualifiers Monday:
U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III qualified for the third time in the past six years with a 2-under-par 139 at Scioto Country Club and Ohio State’s Scarlet Course.
Love, 48, the 1997 PGA champion, was among 16 players to qualify from the biggest of the 11 sectional qualifying sites.
Others who qualified from Scioto and Scarlet included medalist Charlie Wi, Kevin Streelman, D.A. Points, Rod Pampling and Steve Marino.
Wi, a Cal alum, was the medalist by three strokes. He opened with a 7-under-par 65 at Scarlet and followed that with a 67 at Scioto.
At Rockville, Md., Shane Bertsch was medalist and received one of seven spots at Woodmont Country Club. Bertsch has played only one other U.S. Open in his career, which also was at the Olympic Club in 1998, when he missed the cut.
At Glen Ellyn, Ill., Tim Herron grabbed one of two spots available at Village Links. Herron tied for 53rd in the ’98 U.S. Open at Olympic.