The LPGA Tour has a major marketing and sponsorship problem because many of its top players are either not fluent in English or don't speak it at all. That's why it announced yesterday that it will insist its players speak English to a certain standard or face suspension of their membership. The LPGA informed its tournaments through a notice from the office of Mindy Moore, the LPGA's senior vice-president of professional development and member services. A source provided a copy to The Globe and Mail.
According to the notice, a player must "meet the required level of [English] communication" by the end of her second year of membership, thereby ensuring that "all members communicate with our core audiences - fans, sponsors, media - in English throughout their careers on the LPGA."
Players who joined the Tour in 2008 or earlier will have to meet the standard by the end of 2009.
The notice also read, in part: "As a follow-up to the communications we have shared with the membership this year, the LPGA has adopted a policy on effective communication in English. Under this policy, all members must demonstrate that they can communicate in English in the following areas of our business: interaction with amateurs during tournament pro-ams, media interviews, and winner acceptance speeches, including thanking sponsors, fans, and volunteers."
More Stories
Golfweek's Beth Ann Baldry first reported the policy yesterday on the magazine's website. She wrote that the LPGA held a mandatory meeting on Aug. 20 for its South Korean players to give them the news. Forty-five South Koreans, among the 121 international players from 26 countries, are LPGA members. They belong to the sport's most important women's professional golfers association. Many observers think their lack of English means they can't show their personalities. The word "faceless" is often applied.
While the problem is obvious, it's precisely because the LPGA is so important that it should be open to all who can qualify on the basis of their play alone. Sure, some players can't speak English well enough to provide quotes and stories for the media. It's also difficult for sponsors and pro-am players who pay big bucks to tee it up with the women.
"The bottom line is, we don't have a job if we don't entertain," Hilary Lunke, the president of the LPGA's player executive committee, told Baldry. "In my mind, that's as big a part of the job as shooting under par."
The LPGA should ensure that interpreters are on hand at every tournament. Some players do have interpreters, and a transcript in English is provided to the media when an interview is conducted in a player's native language. This doesn't help pro-am players, of course.
It makes sense that players who don't speak English should try to learn the language. Most players do try, and the LPGA makes the Rosetta Stone language-training program available to its members. But it can take a long time to get comfortable in a foreign language. My wife taught college English for nearly 30 years, often to people for whom English was a second or third language. A certain percentage of these students never became fluent in English, no matter how hard they worked. Canada and the United States are full of immigrants who can't speak English after years of taking lessons.
Smacking a two-year time period on golfers to learn English, then, smacks of xenophobia in the extreme. The idea is offensive, and its implementation is sure to generate hostility and anxiety.
"We saw it today for the first time," Rick Desrochers, the Royal Canadian Golf Association's managing director of championships, said of the policy yesterday. "We read it in the press first and almost concurrently got something from the Tour. We run a tournament [the CN Canadian Women's Open]. You would have thought that'd have given tournament operators a heads-up.
"I suppose their intention is right," Desrochers continued. "They're trying to help players. But the area is so sensitive. They're saying that unless you speak our language, we won't let you participate in our game."
The LPGA could lose some tremendous players if it's not careful. Imagine a scenario where a player who can't speak English to LPGA standards wins a major championship in her rookie year. She has two years to learn English or face suspension. She doesn't learn it, and she's suspended. The LPGA says it will provide tutoring and then do another evaluation, but there are no guarantees the lessons will take.
Flash back to 1998, when Se Ri Pak, a South Korean, arrived on the LPGA Tour. Her first win was the LPGA Championship, a major tournament. She won the U.S. Women's Open the same year and two more LPGA wins by season's end. Pak wasn't comfortable speaking English, but she tried. She wasn't forced to try.
I was involved in a Canadian television show then and interviewed Pak a few times. She wasn't comfortable in English. But she showed plenty of personality by being herself. Ten years later, her English remains halting, but she's tried to learn in her own way and her own time and she's been a tremendous asset to the LPGA Tour.
Pak's arrival signalled the beginning of the influx of Korean players. Had the two-year window been in place then, would Pak have been suspended for not speaking English well enough? Who knows? Who knows what standards the LPGA will impose? Why should golfers be forced to speak English? Politicians speak in their native tongues when addressing their colleagues from all over the world.
This is all about business, sponsorship, that is. Times are tough, and South Koreans are dominating the LPGA Tour. Kate Peters, the executive director of the LPGA's State Farm Classic, told Baldry: "This is an American tour. It's important for sponsors to be able to interact with players and have a positive experience."
It's an American tour? The LPGA is in Canada, Singapore, Mexico, France, England, South Korea and Japan. Should Paula Creamer have to speak Korean if she plays in South Korea? Should Natalie Gulbis have to speak Spanish if she plays the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico come November?
The fault isn't with players who can't speak English. They are who they are. The LPGA is running scared. It needs to embrace golf as a global game and welcome foreign players, including those who don't speak English.
Instead, the LPGA Tour is threatening those players. When it comes to players who don't speak English "properly," it appears LPGA should stand for "Ladies, Please Go Away." Just watch the blowback from this one.
18