Encore, encore:
Casey Martin improbably has qualified for another U.S. Open at the Olympic Club.
Fourteen years ago, when Casey Martin was introduced on the No. 1 tee at the Olympic Club, he was greeted by a “riotous cheer,” according to the next day’s Sporting Green.
Safe guess: Another riotous cheer — energized by a fresh layer of improbability — awaits Martin next week at Olympic.
Monday’s sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open yielded many compelling storylines. There was a caddie who used to jam with Bruce Springsteen, a high-school student making it for the second consecutive year and a club pro who finally qualified when his playoff putt, after hanging on the lip for five full seconds, tumbled into the hole.
None of these storylines tops Martin — at age 40, long since retired as a player, still nursing the painful circulatory disorder in his right leg — earning his U.S. Open encore.
“Simply incredible,” Tiger Woods tweeted Tuesday of his
onetime Stanford teammate. “Ability, attitude and guts. See you at Olympic Casey.”
Martin had not played a competitive round in five years until local qualifying last month. He had not touched a golf club in the nine days before Monday’s sectional, because he was busy coaching his Oregon team into the NCAA semifinals.
And there he stood in the darkness in Creswell, Ore. — hands on hips, gazing toward the sky, contemplating how in the world he managed to play his way back into the Open.
Martin displayed class and dignity during his legal tussle with the PGA Tour. He didn’t seek pity or publicity, and he didn’t gloat when the Supreme Court validated his right to use a cart in competition. He was the ultimate professional through a sticky, public fight.
Not so with the tour, even 11 years after the nation’s highest court ruled in Martin’s favor. Tuesday’s wire story on pgatour.com, detailing Martin’s achievement the previous night, was edited to omit all references to his lawsuit.
Now was that really necessary?
Final qualifier
PGA Tour players Tommy Biershenk, Stephen Ames, Joe Ogilvie, Joe Durant, Bill Lunde and Hunter Haas earned spots in the final 36-hole qualifier in Memphis, which was delayed one day by rain. Hunter Hamrick of Alabama, coming off an NCAA championship team loss, also earned a spot. Among those not advancing was Lee Janzen, a two-time U.S. Open champion who won the last time it was held at the Olympic Club in 1998.
Nobody can change this: Martin will ride another cart in another Open in San Francisco. It’s unrealistic to expect him to match his 1998 performance, when he tied for 23rd — honestly, it’s unrealistic to expect him to make the cut — but it was wildly unrealistic to think he would even qualify.
As then-Chronicle columnist Tim Keown wrote in June ’98, “The common, everyday fans believe (Martin) is doing something pretty special. … He’s actually accomplishing something. He’s making a weird kind of history, and he’s doing it by overcoming an obvious hardship.”
Those words still ring true.
Now about those other compelling storylines:
Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez was the original drummer in Springsteen’s E Street Band. Now he’s the longtime caddie for Mark McCormick, a 49-year-old New Jersey club pro who was taking his fifth shot at qualifying for the Open.
This time, McCormick — and Lopez — made it.
“Vini’s the real celebrity out here,” McCormick told reporters.
Springsteen actually fired Lopez in 1974, a year before releasing “Born to Run.” Now Lopez is running to San Francisco with McCormick, who vowed, “I won’t ever fire him.”
Dennis Miller, a 42-yearold from Youngstown, Ohio, is the director of golf for Mill Creek Metro Parks. It was his 12th attempt at qualifying, and he sneaked into the field in Columbus at the last moment when another player withdrew.
Then, on the fourth playoff hole, Miller stood on the fringe facing a 25-foot birdie putt to earn a trip to San Francisco. The ball broke tantalizingly toward the hole before stopping on the lip. The crowd groaned and Miller turned away in shock and frustration.
Then, suddenly, the ball disappeared and the spectators erupted. Miller raised his arms in triumph, his Open dreams finally fulfilled.
It’s a really cool clip (on golfchannel.com).
Last year, as a 16-year-old high school sophomore, Beau Hossler defied the odds by qualifying for the Open (he missed the cut). Now, as a 17-year-old high school junior, he’s coming back for more.
Hossler, from Mission Viejo (Orange County), was among the seven players advancing Monday at Lake Merced and Harding Park. That apparently makes him the first high-school student in the modern era to qualify for back-to-back Opens, according to the USGA.
Maybe Hossler will draw an Open pairing alongside Michael Allen, the 53-yearold Bay Area native. Allen has been an Olympic Club member more than twice as long as Hossler has been alive.