fl-ore! pleasee

Golf was in the air last week with the 37th Ryder Cup being contested in Kentucky. This biennial event pitches the best men players from America against the Europeans. It’s all great fun.

Out of sight but not out of mind has been the Women’s Professional Tour or the LPGA. Last week the LPGA dropped plans to suspend players who are not conversant in English by 2009. About 120 women players are foreign born – many from Japan or Korea.

Without sufficient English they can’t handle interviews, talk to fans or ~ worse yet ~ appear in commercials to promote golf balls, pantyhose, toothpaste and the other essentials of modern life. In other words, if you wanna play for us ~ ya gotta speak English.

The intention of the LPGA English-only policy was to help Shi Yi, Mi Hyun Kim, Ying-Yang and others enhance financial opportunities for themselves, their sponsors, TV stations and the tax coffers of various nations.

Under pressure from civil liberties groups the LPGA has now dropped this policy. Has anyone thought of asking the half dozen well known golf commentators to learn Korean or Japanese so they could do a quick simultaneous translation on the air? Just 30 seconds or so about the tee shot they hooked (fore!) or the tricky cross wind around the 15th hole? That’s it.

This would show respect to the individual players and their native language and dazzle monolingual American viewers with some bilingual conversation ~ which is the norm around the world these days.