Master Stroke: LPGA Makes Learning English a Player Requirement

"In all parts of the world, educators and politicians are suddenly realizing that language differences can create major obstacles to the educational, economic and social advancement of those whose true integration into the framework of society is necessary if that society is to be healthy ..."

Those words were written in the 1960s by renowned dialectologist Raven I. McDavid, and, as the LPGA showed us this week, they are as pertinent now as they were then. In requiring its players to be sufficiently proficient in the use of the English language or face suspension from the tour, the LPGA shows it understands the profound importance of language communication at the highest levels of competition.

The largest audiences for the LPGA are not found in Japan or Korea. They are found in the US. Imagine the drop in ratings the tour would get when a Korean player wins a major tournament and delivers a 15 minute speech in Korean as a translator struggles to keep up and misses words here and there. In this short-attention-span, 24-hour-news-cycle era, most Americans don’t have the patience for something like that. Sure, it’d be a novelty at first, but what happens when the Korean version of a female Tiger Woods begins dominating the tour … and nobody outside Little Korea can understand her.

Golf, like all sports, is first and foremost an entertainment industry. Personally, I don’t get it at all. Golf, to me, is a sport to be played, not watched, but that’s just me. Millions of Americans enjoy watching the excitement of golf and the thrilling victories at the final hole.

And that’s the point. The LPGA’s first commitment, believe it or not, is to its audiences -- not to its players. The audiences are the ones paying the bills, they’re the ones who buy the sponsors’ stuff and they’re the ones who want to see winners they can understand. It just so happens, most of them speak English.

There will no doubt be those who see this as an “elitist” move on the part of the LPGA, but it’s not. It’s a practical one, founded on practical business principals and it must have been the topic of considerable internal discussion. Although its membership is international, the LPGA is a private organization and has the right to require its players to communicate with one another -- and its key demographic -- in the language of its bylaws. Shouldn't players be required to understand the language on their scorecards and leaderboards? Some feel the new requirement is directed at players from Japan and Korea, who represent an Asian influx that has made impressive and laudable inroads into the tour in recent years. Yet these same players not only understand the reasoning behind the decision, they also embrace it. They’re not complaining, probably because they realize that, like McDavid said all those years ago, to do so would be to create major obstacles to their own economic and social advancement.

Economics are just as important to LPGA players as it is to the LPGA itself. Its officials are apparently savvy enough to understand that their very jobs depend on appeasing the people who tune in to watch their tours.

If LPGA tournaments were played every four years, that would be one thing, but they're not. This isn't, after all, the olympics.

Those games ended last week.