Columnist Dean Juipe: Pro golfers find grind takes toll

Dean Juipe

Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 | 10:40 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Perhaps a moment of silence would be inappropriate.

Yet with the opening of the professional golf season, maybe we should take this time to pause and reflect on the poor sons of guns who comprise the PGA Tour.

Oh sure, golf is a glamorous game and the prize money at tour events has skyrocketed to otherworldly sums in recent years.

But there are negatives hidden in the mix, one of which was exacerbated just this week. It may not be immediately apparent, but the U.S. Supreme Court may change the way tour players go about their daily chores.

But first this financial primer, designed to build sympathy for those who see pro golfers as spoiled and unreasonably compensated for their efforts: A record 16 PGA members may have made in excess of $2 million last year, yet the average salary in Major League Baseball is $2.1 million and it's way easier to come off the bench and pinch hit or catch a pop fly than it is to hold off Tiger Woods with a birdie putt on the 72nd hole.

So golfers may be underpaid, if anything.

And this is especially true if recent comments by tour veterans Mark Calcavecchia and Davis Love III can be taken at face value.

Speaking at the year-end Tour Championship, Calcavecchia looked at the 29-man field and maintained "I don't think you can name one" player in attendance who either wasn't injured right then or hadn't been injured during the year. The inference is clear: Its country club image aside, pro golf has become a grueling sport.

It's that way because players spend hours upon hours every day standing in one spot and hitting balls at real or imagined targets. While practice has always made perfect, this type of regimented commitment is a fairly recent development and one brought on by the increased competition and money that drives players to mindless excess.

Like birds in a cluster, tour pros congregate on ranges and chirp with pride as they bat balls into the wee hours. But the result, beyond an extra five yards off the tee and maybe an improved greens-in-regulation stat, is an increased occurrence of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Once associated only with assembly line workers or grocery store clerks, carpal tunnel is making its presence known on the PGA Tour. "You're going to see more and more of it," Love professed to an audience that, if not immediately teary eyed, was after it weighed the consequence of his remark.

Imagine, a future in which today's pros are reduced to greeter's status at Scandia, simply because they overdid it on the range -- and because the Supreme Court has ruled that carpal tunnel victims are not entitled to disability relief unless they can demonstrate an inability to perform normal, daily tasks.

If you can still bathe yourself, the Court ruled this week in a case involving an auto worker, you cannot collect from the government or an employer on a carpal-tunnel claim. It's a decision that is said to potentially affect a million Americans.

So as you're watching the tour this weekend from sun-splashed Hawaii, direct a silent or expressed condolence the players' way. It's not all fun and games for the tanned and hearty set.

Robots have their miseries, too.