Left Flank

I'm in no way defending the LPGA and its new English-language policy. Defend the game of golf? The sport that has only recently allowed non-whites even to appear with a golf club unsupervised? Damn, there just aren't any dream jobs that don't actually require learning, or commitment, out there anymore.

Padraig Harrington, who has won the last two majors, wondered if the LPGA Tour is taking on too much. Like others, he wants to know how much English a player is supposed to learn to be «effective.»

«Surely if you can say, 'Hello,' that's English. Is that good enough?» he said. «Who draws the line about how many words you've got to know in English? What if you have a person who genuinely struggles with learning a new language; they have a learning disability? That's tough to ask somebody with a learning disability, who might have found golf as the saving grace in their life, to ask them to learn a different language or else you can't play.

«There's a lot of different issues to that,» he said. «It's a big step to actually put it out there.»

Pardon me if I just don't see the problem, when my students stress over a single, picayune grammar rule or word that might appear on a test, or just don't speak because they tremble at the thought of an error. Or, normal people need to go to classes for skills training.

Here's a solution:

In the case of the South Koreans, hiring a full-time interpreter for every event would be a good start to solving the precarious situation in which the LPGA Tour and its membership currently find themselves.

But fining, docking access to tournaments, etc.? Aren't there laws against that sort of discrimination in the US? What is the inverse-GITMO exception for bad corporations where onerous American laws don't apply to foreigners? If an adult (or coterie of groupies arrayed around their sugar beast of burden) can't figure out the trade-offs of learning a foreign language in a foreign country, or an American association can't objectively understand what its foreign membership has to deal with in their mutually-advantageous roles, well, corporations rise and fall pretty quickly. Who needs an LPGA?

Shut up, you whiners!

Powered by ScribeFire.