Tiger Woods, just as an amateur, Casey Martin

[Scary_Tiger]

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Golf carts are lame in competition. imo golf carts are lame out of competition but I guess I understand the need for them in certain situations most notably when the golf course is full of people on the weekends taking 150 shots and/or for fat people.

Clearly someone who uses a cart in competition has an advantage over someone who does not.

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???

I think most pro's can find their way to a treadmill a few times a week and be able to manage the vicious hike. (Sorry, Phil.)

[MoreWineII]

C'mon dude, common sense tells us walking 18 holes is tougher than riding in a cart for 18 holes. Do I really have to argue this?

[tuq]

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Ask Ken Venturi.

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No thanks.

[Soul Daddy]

What a strange thread.

[damaniac]

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What a strange thread.

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No kidding. I kept rereading everything, trying to figure out how this related. Then I realized OP just asked completely unrelated questions.

As for Woods, if he died before going pro he'd be one of the great "What ifs", sort of like Phar Lapp (extra credit if anyone knows who that is).

Casey, meh. I'm sure walking for 4 hours in the sun is harder than riding and causes some fatigue, and that fatigue could indeed induce poorer play. But on that note, you're walking, not running, it's 4 hours so you can take breaks, sit down, drink lots of water, and the game itself is a series of very short discrete actions, so it's not like a marathon. No one tried to do a study to see how scores differed (even among amateurs) in this context? That'd be interesting info IMO, and probably should be dispositive if the methodology is correct.

But a lot of this is just bias from someone who runs 5 miles a day, often in mid-afternoon in the summer, and finds whining about walking a few miles over several hours unbelievably weak. Ok, it probably has an effect, I get it. I also think we should ban crowd noise at basketball games, as it clearly interferes with the concentration and self-esteem of the athletes.

[TheNoodleMan]

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But a lot of this is just bias from someone who runs 5 miles a day, often in mid-afternoon in the summer, and finds whining about walking a few miles over several hours unbelievably weak. Ok, it probably has an effect, I get it. I also think we should ban crowd noise at basketball games, as it clearly interferes with the concentration and self-esteem of the athletes.

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I think what you meant to say is that deaf people shouldn't be allowed to play because it gives them an unfair advantage.

Without getting in to the whole deal of how big of an advantage it is not to walk the course, I was always amazed at the resistance that PGA and its players had towards Martin. Had he been successful, he would have been a huge draw to the tour, and this was at a time when Tiger's drawing power wasn't as established as it is now. I guess they were worried about a precedent, but Martin seemed like a pretty unique situation to me.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Tiger Woods would be a name most people outside golf or sports wouldn't know, duh I guess. Kind of like Len Bias maybe.

Not familiar with this Martin situation, but I think I heard about it awhile ago. Either everyone walks or everyone has the option to ride a cart.

I'm not a golfer.

[tolbiny]

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But a lot of this is just bias from someone who runs 5 miles a day, often in mid-afternoon in the summer, and finds whining about walking a few miles over several hours unbelievably weak. Ok, it probably has an effect, I get it. I also think we should ban crowd noise at basketball games, as it clearly interferes with the concentration and self-esteem of the athletes.


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The problem is not the size of the advantage conferred, its the breaking of the rule. The rules are there to (attempt) to remove ambiguity and define the winner of the contest, and all players are supposed to have rules applied equally. Allowing one person extra equipment, extra time or any consideration is a violation of the spirit of the game.

[MoreWineII]

I'm not saying walking 18 holes should kill anyone. I'm not saying someone in shape should find it impossible to overcome. Hell, I'm not even saying golfers are athletes.

I'm saying if you take ten million golfers who ride in carts for 18 holes and you take ten million golfers who walk for 18 holes, when you compare you are going to find that the walkers are more fatigued than the riders are overall. Usually in sports, when you are fatigued you do not perform as well as when you are not fatigued.

So in competition, I think making carts available is unfair and I think that statement is pretty close to fact.

My opinion is that if your intention is to go out and compete in an outdoor environment, why in the hell would you spend half your time sitting in a cart... and pay nearly as much as you paid for your round (or more) to do it? So I don't get it at all from the P.O.V. of the majority of players I see using them. But at the same time I understand the need for the courses to have them available to move the players along quickly and for certain players who may have physical needs to have them available.

Someone should make a graph of the rise in the use of carts on the golf course and compare it to the graph of the rising obesity in America. It would make for a good term paper.

[TheNoodleMan]

Lol at the the golfers talking about the physical strain of walking the course and how its such an integral part of the game, yet they still have someone else carry their bag.

Would it have been against the rules for him to have a huge caddy carry him everywhere?