Casey Martin calls it a day

In a quiet move, Casey Martin has apparently ended his professional golf career after failing to make it through Q-school last week. "I love golf," he told reporters. "I wanted to be great."

“I’ve pretty much made it clear that this would be my last Q-school,” Martin said on Golf Digest’s Web site. “I’m not saying I’ll never compete again. But I don’t anticipate it being my main thing.”

Regardless of your feeling about the use of carts in professional golf, I think Martin's battle against a rare circulatory disability was especially courageous. He did make it to the PGA Tour -- for a single year -- and has bounced around on the Nationwide Tour, where he only played a handful of events this past year as the condition of the leg worsened. Martin has a degree in economics, so I'm sure there's a future after golf. But Martin is an athlete who faces ending his career without fully realizing their potentional, and I must admit I find it quite sad.