In professional sports, it's all about how you perform on the field. Can you execute in clutch situations? Can you do your job when the chips are down? Nothing else matters; that's what makes you a professional.

Unless, of course, you play on the the LPGA tour, where, starting in 2009, players who have been on the tour for at least two years "must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills," according to a report on Golfweek.com. The tour justifies this brand-new rule by stressing "the importance of being able to entertain pro-am partners. Players are already fined if the LPGA receives complaints from their pro-am partners."

Wow. What's next? Presumably most of the pro-am partners are men, wouldn't it be more "entertaining" to mandate short-shorts for the LPGA players on pro-am day? What if a pro-am partner wants a little cuddle time from his playing partner during the round? That would be the ultimate "entertainment," wouldn't it?

Ridiculous? Sure it is, but so is the idea that all of the golfers on the LPGA Tour should be little Barbies that can carry on conversations in English with their stuffed-shirt pro-am partners. The men's PGA Tour has no such English-speaking mandate and they seem to be doing okay.

According to the report at Golfweek.com, 26 different countries are represented on the LPGA Tour this year by 121 different players; 45 of them are from South Korea.

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the Korean language is just a little bit different than English, and now, in addition to telling these people - who are professional golfers, not linguists or diplomats - that they must drive and chip and putt against the best women in the world if they want to be successful on this tour, that, oh yeah, by the way, learn a totally foreign language just in case you win a tournament. We wouldn't want you foreigners embarrassing a sponsor by playing magnificent golf over an entire weekend but not being able to pronounce the company's name in the post-tournament interviews.

The most incredible part of this story is the reaction of the players, most of whom seem to think it's perfectly reasonable. I wonder what the reaction would be if the players were told they had a year to learn Korean or face being banned from the tour until they did?

And, yes, I do realize that many, if not most, of these young ladies have played college golf in the states and thus should be able to speak at least passable English. I understand that, and good for them if they can, even if they're not from the U.S. But if even one deserving player is prevented from earning a living, not because she isn't good enough, but because she doesn't speak the right language, then it will illustrate the absurdity of only allowing the "right" people to compete.

Rightly or wrongly, the sport of golf is viewed among many as an elitist game. Is this really the message they want to send to people over at the LPGA? That you can only play if you speak my language? Haven't we gone through decades of strife with a little thing called the civil rights movement? Aren't we smarter than this?

I had intended to cut and paste the Korean translation for the phrase "Speak English or beat it" here, but this board doesn't support Korean - all I get when I do it is a bunch of question marks which, the more I think about it, the more I believe that's incredibly appropriate.  So, LPGA, here's what I think of your message of inclusion and good sportsmanship: ??? ?? ???? ???

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