Shouldn't It Be Scots?

Golf is an international game. Players from all over the world come to the United States to chase big bucks and major tournaments. Apparently this is a problem for the LPGA, which is making an interesting move:

Concerned about its appeal to sponsors, the women’s professional golf tour, which in recent years has been dominated by foreign-born players, has warned its members that they must become conversant in English by 2009 or face suspension.

'We live in a sports-entertainment environment,' said Libba Galloway, the deputy commissioner of the tour, the Ladies Professional Golf Association. 'For an athlete to be successful today 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.'

'Being a U.S.-based tour, and with the majority of our fan base, pro-am contestants, sponsors and participants being English speaking, we think it is important for our players to effectively communicate in English.'

The logic is that because the tour (and the players) survives mostly on money from sponsors, the players have to do PR events with them and need to speak their language. There's a similar dynamic at work in motor racing, of course, where I'll point out that everybody involved in Formula 1 speaks English, as least passably. That includes the drivers, only four of whom are from English speaking countries (none from the US, sadly).

It certainly makes business sense for the foreign players to bone up on their English. But it seems that the market should take care of those who don't - if they aren't valuable to the sponsors, after all, they're unlikely to hang around the tour that long. By imposing the English requirement from on high, the LPGA looks heavy handed and xenophobic. Judging by the comments to the linked article, it's not the kind of publicity the tour is looking for.