Mark Schnabel: SportSpeak

Some final thoughts on the USGA Adaptive Open Championships here at Sand Creek Station this week.

It was a good tournament for Newton. Most of the players I was able to talk to seemed to enjoy themselves. Players were, as usual for tournaments here, more than complementary about the course and the town.

While it’s booked for Maryland for the next two years, if Newton can get it back here, the city and course should make the attempt.

I’ll be curious to find out what the final numbers are in terms of hotel rooms rented, restaurants visited and what the overall economic impact will be.

The tournament drew just under 100 players total from the US, Canada and at five other continents — Africa, Asia, Australia, South America and Europe.

We even had our moment in the sun in the national media with some live reports from NBC/Universal’s Golf Channel.

If somebody deserves credit for the whole concept of the tournament, at least indirectly, I’d have to give it to Casey Martin.

If you aren’t familiar with the name, back in the 1990s, Martin was a golfer and former teammate of Tiger Woods at Stanford. He suffered from Klippel—Trénaunay syndrome, a congenital circulatory disease.

He sued the PGA under the Americans with Disabilities Act to compete professionally with the use of a cart. The PGA basically said to accommodate Martin would tarnish the purity of the game and give Martin a competitive advantage — not withstanding the fact that Martin had great difficulty walking and eventually lost the leg in 2021.

Martin did win the case in the Supreme Court 7-2.

Martin did win a Nike (now Korn Ferry Tour) event, the same tour that features the Wichita Open. He qualified for the PGA Tour for a year and played in at least two US Opens.

Martin played in the Wichita Open on three occasions, making the cut once.

The first thing I checked on when I found out the tournament was coming here is where it would fit in with the upcoming Paralympic Games, which start next month in Paris.

To my surprise, it isn’t yet among the 22 current Paralympic sports and won’t be, barring any unforeseen changes, until at least after the 2028 games in Los Angeles.

I asked a couple of the top finishers of the Adaptive Open tournament about that, and they seemed to think the sport belonged.

“One hundred percent,” men’s overall winner Kipp Popert said. “They sadly declined the last three times, up to (Los Angeles) basically. It will be. We’re tenacious. The focus of the players is growing this sport and provide more opportunities in this game. We didn’t always have those.”

“I think there is enough talent here that it deserves to be in the Paralympics,” women’s second place finisher Kim Moore said. “As you can see with this event, it’s grown tremendously. The categories need to be adjusted. Things need to be a little deeper with that. It’s kind of hard to classify some people. But this definitely needs to be in the Paralympics.”

Had it been a Paralympic sport, Newton’s event would certainly have been important in selecting the U.S. team, falling right around where the trials are held.

Mark Schnabel is the sports editor of the Kansan.