I blame Sandra Post.
I understand the organiser's desire for players to do press conferences in English, but the LPGA needs to keep in mind just how international an organisation it has become.
In the 2008 season, more than 30% of the events on the LPGA Tour will be played outside the US. Of the 185 playing members of the tour who have so far made a cheque in 2008, 121 of them are "international" players [list of them here - .pdf]. Even if you discount the 27 players from Australia, South Africa, Canada and the UK, that's still more than half the players on the tour for whom English is not their mother tongue.
The money list hasn't been topped by an American since Betsy King in 1993. Julie Inkster is the only American in the top five of the all time money winners on the tour.
It's an international tour now, and it's only going to become more so. I'd be interested to see how the legal battle would pan out if the LPGA ever did try to implement this and throw someone out because they couldn't speak English.
Plus, JJ, they are not going to throw a player out of the LPGA.
Sorry, Bo. I was using the word "out" in the sense that it is antonymical to the word "in", which is what a suspension would stop you from being as far as I can gather.
I suspect the lact of outspoken players has a lot to do with the fact that although the foreign ones might not speaka dee England good enough for the sponsors, they're mostly smart enough to know that being publically critical of your sport's organising body - no matter how discriminatory and ridiculous that organising body is being - isn't going to land you any new deals either.
"For an athlete to be successful in the sports entertainment world we live in, they need to be great performers on and off the course, and being able to communicate effectively with sponsors and fans is a big part of this," said the LPGA's deputy commissioner Libba Galloway.
The monkey has strangled the organ grinder and is now dancing around on the top of the piano in a panic wondering why it won't play. This whole thing is fucktardedness of the highest order. No player is bigger than the game, and neither is an organising body.