What a stupid idea! What matters is the quality of the golf being played. There are plenty of players in other sports who don’t speak English. Sponsors aren’t dropping the LPGA because some women on the tour don’t speak English. They’re dropping the LPGA because there is a glut of golf out there and the economy is poor.
In the pre-Tiger era, PGA events often changed or lost sponsors. The LPGA simply needs to cut back the number of tournaments and concentrate on getting a good field at the tournaments they do have.
Given that it isn’t clear that states can’t require “English Only” for government functions, it would be hard to say that a private corporation couldn’t require “English Only” for members to participate in its tournaments.
It is, however, a really stupid way of trying to say: stay away you foreign women with the really good games and the really weird names! :mad:
The only thing I object to here is the suddenness, and the lack of sensitivity.
From a business standpoint, it’s only common sense that a sports league should want its players to speak the language of its fans. The fans are the ones paying the bills, and if players can’t/won’t speak to or interact with fans, fans are going to lose interest and tune out.
I think foreign players who plays sports professionally here in the U.S. should learn to speak decent English- and many do (heck, Annika Sorenstam and Michael Stich speak much better English than many American athletes!). But the answer isn’t to ban players who don’t speak English- it’s to encourage them to learn, and to make it easier for them to do so. Many major league baseball teams have set up programs to make sure that, say, Dominican kids in their minor league systems learn English. THAT’S the right approach- not a sudden, dogmatic “LEarn ENglish or you’re outta here!”
But in theory, at least, I have no objection to sports leagues anywhere i nthe world wanting their players to speak the local language. It seems to me that American athletes who play abroad should be held to the same standard.
Would Dopers be equally outraged or offended if an Italian or Spanish basketball league with a lot of expatriate American players insisted that those Americans learn Spanish or Italian? Would Dopers be angry if the Nippon Ham Fighters insisted that their American center fielder learn to speak Japanese? I doubt it.
A golfer doesn’t really need to speak to very many people. Unlike a team sport, she picks her own coach and caddy. The only conversations she’ll likely to have on the golf course that would require English would be with a rules official.
These women are not just playing golf. They are participating in a league of golfers. A league that requires contributions from sponsors and amateurs who want to interact with the golfers in order to fund their tournaments.
If the players can’t interact, you get reduced contributions, lower prize money, fewer tournaments. It’s only fair that all players be part of that fan/sponsor interaction, instead of having one set of players drum up contributions and another set simply compete for the prize money.
FTR, the LPGA does have a program to help players learn english.
The closest thing we have to an “official” proclamation that English is the language of the land is case law under which legal documents don’t have to be translated for non-English speakers.
It’s clearly aimed at the huge number of South Koreans currently dominating the LPGA rankings. When the rankings were dominated by white people, the LPGA didn’t seem to care much what language they spoke.
One way to look at this is from the business perspective. The LPGA is an company (not even a public company) that hires independent contractors to work for them for a few days a week. This company has determined that those contractors need to speak English in order to satisfy the clients of the LPGA (the sponsers).
I don’t agree with the policy and it does seem to come out of the blue. Usually you’d expect a trial balloon to be floated prior to the rule being announced. Make you wonder if there was an event at a recent tourny.
As long as the LPGA doesn’t claim to have the best players in the world and is happy to simply be the American tour, I don’t have a problem with restrictions that exclude foreigners. But if they want to have any international prestige (beyond large prizes), they should not have any non-game related restrictions.
That’s right, because the sponsors and fans that pump money into the league could actually have a conversation with top ranked players. If your top ranked players can’t speak english, it’s hard to give sponsors meaningful access to them.
In some sports like golf and NASCAR, the interaction between athlete and sponsor / fan is very important to ensure the health of the league. It’s just as much a part of the job as hitting the ball or driving the car, because the league would be in trouble without it.
In other sports like baseball and football, it’s not nearly as important for an individual to be accessible. There’s a whole team around them to put a face on the franchise, it really only affects their ability to secure personal endorsements.
And of course the LPGA like the PGA is not a business at all but is a means by which local and national charities raise funds. They are basically a kind of charity co-operative. So any efforts to make their product more marketable is designed to maximise charitable donations.
I like the quote in the OP’s linked story that “interest in the LPGA has never been stronger.” I don’t follow the LPGA closely, but it seems over this season I have regularly seen stories about them losing yet more and more tourney sponsors.
Can anyone think of any other sports or entertainment organization that imposes a similar language requirement? ISTM that most would expect the market - endorsements and the like - to reflect an athlete’s language choice.
I’m also a tad surprised that Koreans do not obtain some rudimentary English proficiency through their schooling - especially ones who anticipate pursuing a career in the US. I may well be mistaken, but I always thought I had heard that other nations were far better at having their students learn English, than Americans were at having their students learn a foreign language.
I can imagine a foreign-speaker not wanting to participate in a lengthy free-flowing interview in English, but given the tremendous depth and insight in most athlete interviews, how hard would it be for someone to learn to say, “I putted very well today”, “The course played tough, but fair”, “The fans were great!”, or “Buy Nike!”
Pro (American) football would pretty much require you to speak English, since the play calls are all in English (or the coaces’ variant thereof). AFAIK, there’s no rule on it, though.
Again, I don’t see why this couldn’t be handled by an interpreter.
