The LPGA was hoping that their new policy on English would be perceived as a modest and largely unpublicized change to their policy. However, it has drawn international attention, with dailies from the UK to Korea as well as all the major U.S. publications running stories.
It’s also starting to draw criticism from a variety of angles. Just look at the headlines…
- The Boston Globe – “LPGA Way Out of Bounds“
- The Calgary Herald – “LPGA Shoots Itself in Foot“
- ESPN – “LPGA Tour’s new policy on speaking English goes overboard“
- Newsday – “LPGA could be bringing on a discrimination lawsuit“
Any way you see it, the LPGA has gotten itself it a bit of a politically incorrect pickle. I think Mark Herrmann at Newsday says it best:
LPGA officials do realize they are in the entertainment business, and business is not so hot when the winner can’t communicate with her followers…. But what the LPGA did in trying to cure a public-relations dilemma was create a public-relations nightmare. (Emphasis Mine)
International criticism? Talk of lawsuit? I’m sure the LPGA would like a mulligan right about now…
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Yeah it would be much better if all the sponsors dropped and the LPGA ceased to exist.
Funny article re: this:
http://www.canada.com/vancouve.....b2320a652c
“…..
The five Lees, seven Kims and six Parks on Tour could then regale audiences with tales of what they do when they’re not playing. “We’re talking about practice, man. We’re talking about practice. We’re talking about practice. We’re not talking about the game. We’re talking about practice,” said Seon-Hwa Lee.
…..”
Ha ha!!
That was hilarious!
The funny thing is, most Korean players, if not all, are not opposed to the policy.
If the LPGA wants to carry the underlying premise behind the English policy to its fullest logical conclusion, they should also ban lesbians from its ranks. There has only been the faintest of hints of this in the press but of course mainstream media is going to stay far away from that. But, yes, apparently lesbianism in the LPGA is a factor. A butch-dyke as a pro-am partner is probably far more discouraging to straight male corporate sponsorship than a Korean golfer who is weak in English but is not a dyke.
Additionally, the LPGA should prevent its players, especially the more well-known ones, such as Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, from playing in the PGA Tour.
Also, Mark Kreigel from FOX Sports writes:
Hilary Lunke, president of the LPGA’s Player Executive Committee, told Golfweek that “entertaining” sponsors (read: American corporate sponsors) is “as big a part of the job as shooting under par.”
“This is an American tour,” Kate Peters, executive director of the State Farm Classic, told the magazine. “It is important for sponsors to be able to interact with players and have a positive experience.”
If that’s the case, then why don’t we just dress them up in star-spangled bunny outfits?
Now, that’s an idea I’d have absolutely no problems with, actually.
I mean, as long as they are going to be un-PC about this, why not have the balls to go all the way? But in America, not all political correctness is created equal. In certain cases, the powers that be, while being mindful of not offending Blacks, gays, Jews, or what have you, have absolutely no qualms about discriminating against a weak group that has very little political voice or control.
This incident is also not the finest hour for feminism. In the name of staying afloat in a business world dominated by the white male, the ladies of the LPGA have demonstrated a willingness to penalize their own, and their sad excuse for it is: “it’s the dolla bill, yo.”
Okay, I am going to be the spoil-sport here. The LPGA has been providing, for free, tutors for their international players. The players are not taking advantage of them. The other, English-speaking players, are sick and tired of pulling the weight for those who are not able to function at Pro-Am games and the required after-the-game coctail hour.
Furthermore, the LPGA is NOT AN NGO. It is a for-profit association. It DOES NOT have to allow international players. When a player is accepted into this association, read that “Club” they sign a contract, and there are certain responsibilities that goes with the PRIVILEGE of being allowed into this club: namely, Pro-Am games and dinners with the sponsors.
How is expecting people to uphold their responsibilities in any way a form of discrimination? Perhaps the non-English-speaking players should suck it up and take advantage of the FREE tutors that the LPGA has been providing and learn the dang language.
Just a thought.
MLB, NBA, and NHL are the major sports bureaus with many, many internationals who don’t speak English, with the most number being in the MLB.
MLB never pulled an English requirement.
LPGA did this, because some white girls felt alienated from some Korean girls.
but, try explaining this to Mizar5. The half Korean.
The thing with Mizar is that I haven’t even met an adopted Korean who’s as caucasianified as he is mentally…
It’s like he was born in a non-Korean vacuum and read up on how to be Korean from bad Korean Times translations and old copies of Encyclopedia Britannica.
wjk,
Are you really that stupid?
“All signs point to ‘yes’.”
Wake me up when a contributor to this blog puts up some commentary, or even links to some, that shows any depth of understanding of this issue. This is like watching farmers give their opinion on high fashion, while linking to other farmers opinions to back it up.
Great idea halfwit. The LPGA gets LOADS of media coverage whenever one of its players plays in a PGA event, regardless of outcome. Compare that to the norm of their tour, when they get less than squat.
So along with wanting to destroy one of the vital revenue streams of the LPGA, you want to take away one of the few opportunities it has to get any media coverage. Congratulations on your brilliant plan which blows several more huge holes in the hull of a slowly sinking ship.
Why are you so eager to put Korean golfers in the unemployment line?
Wow, mizarv hasn’t even written anything here, guys. Chill out – try whacking a ball. Whack something.
How does one differentiate between the different female Korean players. They have the same surnames, first names that are not memorable (and only have 2 syllables) , and they look the same. Maybe this is a bigger issue than the English. Sameness is B O R I N G.
Who wants to hear what athletes say, anyway? How do you translate,
“Well, y’know, we, uh, y’know, focussed real hard and, uh, y’know, just kept our eyes on the prize and, y’know, Ms. Lee, y’know, she’s a tough competitor, but, ah, y’know, ya gotta really want it, y’know, to win in this sport, ‘cuz, yah, y’know, there’s a hundred other ladies, y’know, who wanna take it from you, uh, so, y’know, I had a coupla lucky bounces, and I trained hard for this tournament, and, um, the ball went in the hole for me today.”
Into Korean?
Re James #2
In the same issue of the Vancouver Sun is another article about the prestigious private Vancouver Golf Club in Coquitlam is following suit and now rejecting applications from non-English speakers. It makes clear that the problem is specifically about Koreans:
“It got to a point where we had signed up a lot of Korean members and it wasn’t long until they were breaking many of the rules and weren’t participating because they couldn’t read anything or speak or communicate with us,” Gough said Thursday.
“So it was very frustrating and the club determined and made a policy on our application form that everybody who is applying for membership — not just Koreans — be able to speak and communicate in written English. And all of a sudden the tap turned off. There were very few Korean applications.”
Vancouver Golf Club, with a membership of about 1,200, has about 50 Korean members.
I know I am new here but I have been following the comments on this for some time and enough is enough. First off, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Football/Soccer are team sports where the player is hired and paid a salary by the team. The teams either hire translators for the players while to fulfill the duties of of the player and many players do in fact learn survival English.
Golf is an association of people who play golf professionally, much like an independant contractor. As such the players are responsible for a number of things such as supplying their own caddies and paying those caddies salaries. The PGA and LPGA do not provide these free of charge. Players also must pay an entrance fee to play in tournaments, also not free unless the sponsors pay.
There is precedence for the golfers hiring their own translators, one of the Japanese girls has her own and pays for that person out of her own pocket. Bring up the PGA, Choi periodically gives interviews in English, maybe not the best but he still does it. Doubt it? Go to youtube and you will see for yourself. He also hires a translator, again out of his own pocket.
Lat but not least, how is this discriminating against just the Koreans when it clearly states that all international players will have to be able to pass the test, Japanese, Mexican, Spanish and so on.
Please…If they can’t pull their weight then they should have hired translators or taken advantage of the free tools they were provided.
It took guts for the LPGA to adopt the English policy. Now they need to offer the all the cry babies a big cup of STFU.
Maybe the LPGA should hire BlueBalls as a PR talking head.
“caucasianified?”
Some people just can’t seem to get past race. Good luck with that.
Well, c’mon. Koreans only study English for 10 years in the public school system and at least 2 years in university and at least another 12-15 years in hagwons at the same time, sometimes beginning as early as 18 months old. How do you expect them to master complex sentences like, “I play golf?” Give them a break, man. Everyone knows that it takes at least 650 years to learn to speak English and you expect the Koreans to do it less than 30? Slavedrivers.
“Whack something.”
If they had a pair of tweezers they just might.
“Additionally, the LPGA should prevent its players, especially the more well-known ones, such as Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, from playing in the PGA Tour.”
As well as IHearts comment on the publicity received by this, it would probably also constitute illegal restrain of trade given the players are self-employed not employees of the LPGA
first of all gillians comment is dead on about the tours, if they dont take advantage of the help the lpga offers to improve their english then they dont deserve to be on the tour given the nature of the business. park se-ri took advantage and she is one the more popular players out there
i talked to my father about this this morning and he said whats needed more is personality lessons. all his golfing buddies find these koreans have no personality, kind of like kids here who are hogwoned to death it bores them when they watch the women. you look at the pga tour there are some great personalities from all over the world, sergio, monty, phil etc. they show emotion on the course sergios english isnt great but he sure is popular.
personalties drive these tours in addition to being able to schmooze with sponsores the lpga right with few exceptions lack both and thats whats killing them
Look, its really simple. If the LPGA wants to remain an “all-American” tour, which is what this is all about, fine. What are they doing having a third of their venues outside of the US, including Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, and Mexico? Don’t accept foreign sponsorship. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Great idea halfwit. The LPGA gets LOADS of media coverage whenever one of its players plays in a PGA event, regardless of outcome. Compare that to the norm of their tour, when they get less than squat.
No, you’re the half-wit. If an Annika Sorenstam or Michelle Wie plays in the PGA, the PGA gets more coverage (or, more accurately, additional viewership). But, more than that, its Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, themselves, that get more coverage, not the LPGA. The LPGA comes across looking like a second fiddle if one of their star players goes over to the PGA, like a minor league feeder to the PGA’s major league. In fact, Michelle Wie was heavily criticised for this by LPGA players.
It’s really simple. If the LPGA wants to remain an “all-American” tour, which is what this is all about, fine. Then what the hell are they doing having a third of their venues outside of the US, including Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, and Mexico? What are they doing accepting foreign sponsorship?
It took guts for the LPGA to adopt the English policy. Now they need to offer the all the cry babies a big cup of STFU.
Nope, sorry. There’s no “guts” here. The English policy is effectively a quota on the competition. It’s that transparent. The only ones who are crying are the ones that are saying “the Asians are taking over.”
If the men can do it than woman can too.
Despite what the draft dodger wjk said, hockey players HAVE and DO learn English.
Koreans spend fucking YEARS learning English in school!! They shouldn’t have any problems.
The Europeans do it, why aren’t Koreans able to do it? They are supposed to be oh so smart after all.
Korea isn’t so important to the world, so others don’t need to dance to their tune.
As a Korean would say to us expats, “If you don’t like it you should just go home!”
Koreans hate it when you throw their shit back at them!!
#7, the MLB, NBA, and NHL don’t need to pull an English requirement. The non-English-speaking stars of their respective sports understand the need to relate to their fans and learn English on their own. They might need a translator in the beginning, but not usually for very long.
Your lack of knowledge about professional golf is embarrassing given how much you’re commenting on the topic.
The LPGA and the PGA are driven by personalities. Fans do not go to tournaments to see golf, they go to see superstars and their personalities. Wie or Sorenstam crossing over and missing the cut in a PGA event did more to develop them as golfing personalities than winning LPGA tournaments ever did. That’s why they play them.
Their participation provided short-term benefits to that particular PGA event for a weekend, and gave them AND THE LPGA long-term boosts in coverage and attention. Check the weeks of breathless media coverage in January/February 2004 when a 14-year old Michelle Wie missed the cut by one stroke in the Sony Open against the best PGA players in the world.
She and the LPGA got more coverage during the rest of that season solely because of her unbelievable showing in that one tournament against men. Same thing happened in 2006 when she made the cut at the Korea Open against men.
Women competing against men always drives media and interest, even when they fail. Wie and her management know this (as did Sorenstam), and without that aspect to her career, she wouldn’t have gotten $15 million from Nike.
In fact, LPGA players despise the fact that Michelle Wie makes 10-15 times more than they do despite not being an official member of the tour. They’re simply jealous of the marketing and media attention she receives, which is understandable given her recent behavior, performance, and ridiculously clueless father’s antics.
VictimKim,
The LPGA’s English policy is NOT a quota on the Koreans. They could have done that had they chose. (Doesn’t Korean professional baseball and basketball have foreigner quotas?)
The LPGA’s target is the non-English speakers.
I agree with Mizar.
To paraphrase…”But in _______, not all political correctness is created equal. In certain cases, the powers that be, while being mindful of not offending _____, ____, ____, or what have you, have absolutely no qualms about discriminating against a weak group that has very little political voice or control.
Sounds so local.
Try entering a Korean sports event in Korea and see how far you get if you are not Korean!
@ Austin re #30:
“Try entering a Korean sports event in Korea and see how far you get if you are not Korean!”
I don’t know, Austin. The Chinese were doing pretty well with the javelin pokes and the Taekwondo kicking back in April.
More seriously, though, wtf are you talking about? Suzann Pettersen won the Korea Championship in 2007. The men’s Korea Open has had lots of foreign winners:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Open
Or do you mean things like Taekwondo? Since golf is Scottish and not American that would be argumentum ad malum et aurantium.
plenty of foreigners playing in KBOrganiation, Korean Hoops, Korean international football.
yeah, admittedly, there is discrimination, but there is no
“Korean requirement”
The Jose dude in Lotte Giants belting homers, was much abused.
income disparity between KBO and MLB is like 10 fold, by my estimates. Yet, every team has a handful of foreigners.
LPGA is going admit they were racist sooner or later.
JohnT, by your definition, 90% of US Koreans aged 20-30 are draft dodgers. These include the miniscule amount of those who served with USFK as US army.
Let’s hear about your service in the US military.
I can already tell you, that every gyopo here is a draft dodger by your definition.
I agree with you on this. The upshot of this was real people can see Wie for the gluttonous, pissy bitch that she is.
hey wjk,
Claiming racism is intellectually lazy not too mention downright fucking stupid.
Discriminatory…maybe…but racist?
I did not know that race alone was the prime determinant of language.
Will LPGA also require it’s players to speak Korean, Japanese, or else whene they have proam tee off in korea or in Japan? Or translators still need to help English speaking players to entertain international sponsors who couldn’t communicate with players.
Well, the motivation seems to be quite simple, and discrimination is clearly at play here, even if it doesn’t necessarily mean legal discrimination. The competitive level of non Korean golf in LPGA is will not be moving up any time soon, but the Korean ladies seem to work harder than anybody else, which means in the future you will likely have even more Koreans invading the LPGA. So, the hypothetical prospect of an LPGA dominated by 40 to 50% korean women who can’t speak perfect english scared the shit outta them, and this is the best “solution” they’ve come up with.
Perhaps if the ladies put back in even a small fraction of what they have taken out, the LPGA would never have had to make a decision such as this. The fans like winners (with personalities). The opportunity is there (and always has been) for the Korean ladies to not only dominate the leaderboard, but also to become fan favorites.
One way or another though, it would not affect me at all if the majority of the sponsors dropped and the LPGA went tits up.
MLBaseball is at least 35% Latin Americans who can’t speak English.
Ichiro only speaks fluently in English swear words.
Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Matsuzka, Okajima, Fukudome, etc, all speak with translators.
Baseball is happy with that. They don’t feel the threat.
these guys will probably never learn English to give eloquent interviews.
Chanho Park speaks like a Latin American, if you ever heard him speaking English on the radio. I have.
BH Kim never spoke. JW Seo, I never heard. etc, etc, etc.
Goat, I disagree. White people think it’s the worst insult if you call them a racist, but clearly this is racism, not discrimination.
Discrimination is candy coating racism.
by the way, I think the folk at Obama’s church, they are racists.
#11 IHBB
I think you might be giving the “farmers [giving] their opinion on high fashion” too much credit.
I agree with your position for the most part, but it was a very poor business decision when considering what the response from the media and then the public would be.
LPGA wants more Paula Cremers and Anika Sorenstams.
Not some big faced, objectively ugly Korean girl who is 5 feet tall, and 2 feet wide, but has a very good swing. And, on top of that can’t speak good enough English to give meaningless interviews. I’m all for banning them, too.
When wjk says the above is racism, he is called “intellectually lazy”
When Obama wages a campaign against Hillary, alleging racism, where the hell is the charge that “Obama is intellectually lazy”?
I’m telling you. If anything, I have the power of observation.
This Obama talks well, and when it’s concerning him, the American people will ignore racism, ignore sexism, and ignore financial sense.
Take a look around, and it’s the Democrats who are saying “a woman can’t do a man’s job.”
it’s hilarious, actually.
nobody in your camp at the Hole, even bothered to explain how Obama will socialize America with a tax cut to 95% of Americans.
nobody at the Hole cares about tort reform.
I can tell you that Bush mentioned tort reform on a yearly basis, and lawmakers (most of whom were lawyers at some point), reacted like he was speaking nonsense.
they do a lot of expensive tests that nobody pays for in the end, because of possiblity of lawsuit. Then, the cost is “shared” with the middle class, who actually pay for bills.
without tort reform, there is no fundamental fix.
#28 Mizar
Me too.
“MLBaseball is at least 35% Latin Americans who can’t speak English.”
not so true, most of those guys can speak English rather well, except Sammy Sosa, when he’s in front of a judge.
# 40,
My friends who have met Chan Ho tell me he speaks English in a very ghetto fashion… like he learned it from black guys AND Chicanos…
Oh… and just FYI… but back when Nick Cage was frequenting the clubs in ktown my buddies told me he spoke Korean like a ghetto Korean American… like, “oh yeah man, me and my HYUNG we went to this GALBI JIP in HANIN town and it was sooo gude…”
I imagined that using Nick Cage’s speaking tone, style, and rhythm and nearly pissed myself laughing.
Ok not really but I did laugh.
My two cents on all this is that I think, overall, it’s a good idea to have more personable and communicative golf stars in the LPGA. It would help the sport be more popular and financially viable. I also believe that more diversity in who wins the tournaments would also help the fan and sponsor base. However, with that said, I think how the LPGA is doing it now with what I’m hearing about how they want to go about it, is the wrong approach.
As far as I know, and I’m not expert at this, is that the LPGA will arbitrarily select people that they think have less than satisfactory English skills and give them an “oral” test. Now, at this point, there is no written standards as to how LPGA officials will arbitrarily select people or what this oral test will look like. They will not test every body, just people they have a gut feeling is not carrying their English weight. Also, they told this to Koreans in a mandatory meeting. I understand that at 45 ladies, the Korean contingent is the largest international one in the LPGA, HOWEVER, it’s not the only international contingent in the tour. There are Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Latin Americans, Europeans, etc. and many of them have equally crappy English. Why was there no mandatory meeting for them? It just feels as if the LPGA is going about this the wrong way by creating NONWRITTEN and ARBITRARY policies that appear to target a particular group of people. If that’s the case, then that’s wrong and very much un-American if what American means is fair play, non-discrimination and equal right to equal access. Well, I understand that capitalism is as American as apple pie too, but without it tempered with the ideals of fair play and equal access, it doesn’t mean anything and America looses something it’s taken hundreds of years to develop. I mean a restaurant owner in the deep Jim Crow South can always use the economic argument that letting Black people sit and eat with White people would drive him to bankruptcy. This maybe true, but it doesn’t make discriminatory practices any more right, just because they are economically convenient.
Again, I’d like to end by saying that I’d love to see a more diverse range of women win titles at the tour. It would be the best thing for the sport. However, the LPGA’s method of doing this, by setting ambiguous policy by fiat instead of communication and consensus is in my mind very un-American and because so it has become damaging for the LPGA from a public relations point of view, and rightfully so.
If they were serious about improving the financial viability of the LPGA they would scrap the English language requirement (come on, who wants to listen to a woman talk?) and raise the bar on the faces and bodies of women allowed into the league. Too many of them look like they were chasing parked cars types and have thighs like weight lifters.
I recommend sourcing them from the dance schools around Korea, or even coax some former one-hit-wonder girl groups to retire to the LPGA. Wonder girls using and giving wood.
And more lesbian action, not less.
If they want a league all to themselves they will have to work for it.
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