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In the matter of Casey Martin v. PGA

The legal fiction in the Affirmative Action case for defense of Casey Martins application for the Disabilities Act relief is dubious despite it's noble inclination. The political atmosphere aside the Supreme Courts decision on this matter is wrong and turns on the simple question of sport and sportsmanship.

To reveal the nature of this case consider a similar issue that had the potential of effecting the Go Federation & Associations. This board game has evolved almost exclusively in East Asia and so tournament conditions at the higher levels have been largely maintained with Asia formats and protocols. That is formally the competitions are played on low butcher block tables and the players are seated on tatami mat and in match or tournament play they may have to endure this seating all day and sometimes for two days per game. Thus the introduction of Western Players has the like problem of these players when not Asian trained being at a physical disadvantage. Here the question becomes whether Go is an intellectual game or a sport. If the latter then in the proper spirit of competition all aspects of rigor are valid elements of the result, and the want for quality of play is not a bar.

Thus by similar conclusion rigor is what defines the sporting aspect of the game. In fact sport and the notion of a sporting man, does carry the competitive corresponding adherence to obstacles, obstructions, and chance. Quality is not the overriding essence of sporting competitions. If it were then Golf could be played on a fixed flat field to cipher the longest putt or drive. The NFL Super Bowl is not a showboat of the fastest runners, best catchers and so on but an interaction of diverse methods know to obstruct and obscure the free form quality of play. The very obstacles of an 18 hole golf course are sporting obstructions designed to compromise natural quality in the same manner.

Thus in order for Casey Martin to even invoke his challenge, science must arbitrate in and at a point in time in which science cannot proffer an exacting scale concerning how much rigor each player should be subject to fairly. That even if science could mediate the issue of fair rigor one would have to suggest that the game was no longer being played upon the face of natural conditions.