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Un-American!

The Fallacy of New LPGA Speech Guidelines

by Chris Capcara 

For those who haven't heard the news, the LPGA has announced that "all players who have been on tour for two years must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills."  The policy is effective immediately, with the first oral evaluations to be held at the end of the 2009 season. Those who fail the evaluation will be suspended from the Tour.

      Personally, I have never sat through or endured an LPGA event either live or on television. While I enjoy golfing, the only way I can watch is if it is the final Sunday of a major championship or if Tiger Woods is on the course.  However, the reason we must take notice of this news from the LPGA because this new policy is both absurd and un-American.

      Let’s put this in perspective: Imagine that Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League or National Football League implemented such a policy.  Would the MLB suspend a player from Japan or Latin America simply because he could not speak English well enough?  Wouldn’t this deflate the entire purpose of a league -- to bring in the best talent from around the world in order to have the best compete against the best?  What if the NHL suspended, say, the Russian center for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Evgeni Malkin, because they found out that he couldn’t say more than “I’m open!” and the swear words his teammates taught him? Would that be fair?

      Hell no!  What if the NBA, which in the past decade has started going global, had an English language oral evaluation before that player could be drafted?  Would this deflate the entire purpose of going global?  What if the NFL interviewed their incoming draft class and declared that those who either could not speak English well enough or who demonstrated an abuse of the language would be ineligible from the draft?  What is next -- putting an IQ requirement on players?

      Now I do understand that the LPGA would like to have its members speak English so they can market their best players better and receive more sponsorship money.  But this begs the question about what guidelines are set for the oral evaluation. Is the LPGA merely asking its players to be able to say, "I won. Thank you (enter sponsor’s name here)."

      This, however, could backfire. If the class of LPGA golfers from, for instance, South Korea can't pass this evaluation, then many sponsors will be pulling out anyways as the talent pool will drop significantly. But here’s perhaps the most interesting tidbit about the testing policy: According to Golfweek, there is no standard. Players will be targeted for evaluation based on staff observations.

      Maybe this is just a gung-ho law student speaking, but isn't this policy discriminatory? The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made it illegal in this country to discriminate based on the race of a person. Isn't this racism at its finest?  The LPGA has not provided any training or tutoring system for its players -- or at the least has failed to make any such system public.

      Arthur Leonard, a professor of law at New York University Law School and an expert on employment issues, said that in some U.S. states, a potential claim of national origin discrimination could be made if the players were able to show that the rule singled out players of a particular origin.  Personally, I hope legal action ensues, and sponsors drop the Tour because of this policy.

      Now wouldn't that be ironic! 

Instead of enacting the present policy, here is what the LPGA should have instead done: 

The LPGA should have implemented a policy like Major League Baseball where foreign-born players are offered English lessons through the league, and encouraged, not required, to take the lessons to better communicate with fans and the media.

Submitted 2008

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