The LPGA Has Finally Lost It, Forcing Foreign Players to Learn the English

In maybe the craziest story you'll read all week, the Ladies Professional Golf Tour, focused almost entirely in these here United States, will be forcing all women to pass an oral evaluation starting in 2009.

If you fail the English test, your membership will be suspended until you can properly use "Shit, that was a horrible shot" in a sentence. Golfweek has the scoop...

At a mandatory South Korean player meeting Aug. 20 at the Safeway Classic, the tour informed its largest international contingent that beginning in 2009, all players who have been on tour for two years must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills. Failure would result in a suspended membership.

“Hopefully what we’re talking about is something that will not happen,” said Libba Galloway, the tour’s deputy commissioner, of possible suspensions. “If it does, we wouldn’t just say, ‘Come back next year.’ What we would do is work with them on where they fell short, provide them the resources they need, the tutoring . . . and when we feel like they need to be evaluated again, we would evaluate.”

Galloway said the policy takes effect immediately, but the “measurement time will be at the end of 2009.” There are 121 international players from 26 countries on tour; 45 are South Koreans.

The point of this, they say, is to allow all the golfers to communicate better with everyone. The LPGA is "losing sponsors" and they want everyone to be able to communicate with the media, their pro-am partners and even fans. Also, it's absolutely fuck crazy.

Making someone learn English? Our country is compiled of people that couldn't muster a single Japanese phrase besides "Sake Bomb" and now we're forcing people to learn our jacked up language? "Well, their is more of an ownership thing, while they're is short for "they are." How can you not get that?"

I hope this policy is tossed out. The United States does enough stupid stuff, no reason to further that trend with this idea.