Language policy ignites debate

Few American LPGA Tour pros understand how language alters the nature of competition better than Patti Rizzo.

With a firestorm erupting over news last week that the LPGA is establishing a mandate that its members pass English proficiency exams by the end of next season or face possible suspensions, Rizzo’s story has never been more relevant.

Few American tour pros know better how language can warmly unite, and how it can bitterly divide.

Rizzo, a four-time LPGA Tour winner who’s now the head women’s golf coach at Barry University in Miami, became a star in Japan after establishing herself on the American tour.

The former University of Miami standout knows the reward that comes from being embraced in a foreign nation. She was more than a dominant player there. She became a celebrity in great measure because she immersed herself in the culture and learned to speak the language.

But Rizzo also knew the sting of ultimately feeling excluded because of her national origin.

The Japanese LPGA Tour barred Rizzo from playing the final three events of the tour’s 1992 season so that she wouldn’t become the first foreigner to win the money title.

While Rizzo, 48, still remembers her time in Japan fondly, she left disappointed with the unfairness of that blow.

All these years later, she harbors a special appreciation of language, culture and fair play.

“Our sport is different than others because you aren’t just a golfer,” said Rizzo, the LPGA’s Rookie of the Year in 1982. “You’re also an entertainer.

“People aren’t paying just to watch you play golf. They pay to play with you in pro-ams. As an LPGA player, you’re always mingling with important people, even in the player dining area, with owners of companies and sponsors.

“It’s very important for the success of the tour that you speak with those company presidents and sponsors. It’s important for fans, too, to see your personality and character and just know what you are like.

“It’s important, but for the LPGA to say now that you have a year or two to learn English or you’re suspended, I don’t know that I agree with that. I think you have to grandfather in your current members. There has to be a better bridge 1/8 to improve communication 3/8 .”

Golfweek broke a story online last week that in an Aug. 20 meeting with its South Korean players, the LPGA informed them that speaking English proficiently would become a requirement for tour membership. South Koreans make up the LPGA’s largest international contingent, with 45 of the tour’s 121 international players from that nation.

South Koreans were informed by LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens that anyone on tour for at least two years would be required to pass an oral evaluation of English skills at the end of next season, with failure resulting in possible suspension. The LPGA is still working out details of what remains a work in progress.

“Legal businesses and membership organizations have the right to make certain requirements that are fundamental to their business,” LPGA Deputy Commissioner Libba Galloway told Sports Business Journal.

The fact that the tour first revealed its plans to South Koreans was noteworthy.

When Se Ri Pak won the U.S. Women’s Open 10 years ago, she was one of just three South Koreans exempt on the LPGA Tour. Her victory inspired a nation of young girls to play golf.

The season-ending ADT Championship at Trump International in West Palm Beach on Nov. 20-23 will be host to the 32 top qualifiers in the LPGA playoffs. If those playoff spots were secured today, 19 spots would go to players of Asian descent, 17 to South Koreans. Four would go to Americans not of Asian descent: Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr, Laura Diaz and Nicole Castrale.

The tour’s proposed English policy has sparked international debate.

“I understand where the LPGA is coming from, the importance of marketing, but what they’ve done is extreme and doesn’t make sense to me,” said agent Don Shin of Global Sports Management in Orlando, which represents six players of Asian descent, including two-time LPGA Tour winner Meena Lee. “To suspend a player because she failed an English test, that’s awkward. You don’t see that in any other sport in any other country.”

State ACLU officials have already warned of potential legal action should the LPGA actually impose the new English rule. The LPGA is based in Florida, with its headquarters in Daytona Beach.

“The LPGA is on shaky legal ground and runs a significant risk of being sued for national origin discrimination,” said Michael Masinter, a Nova Southeastern law professor and chair of Florida’s ACLU legal panel. “I’m surprised by the clumsiness. I’m a law professor, not a public relations expert, but this hardly looks like the kind of introduction of policy that was thought through very thoroughly.”

Masinter said state and federal civil rights laws apply, as do state public accommodation laws.

Rizzo understands the delicate terrain the LPGA is crossing.

Her Asian success evolved out of the friendship she struck with Japan’s Ayako Okamoto when Okamoto first came to the United States in 1982. Rizzo didn’t know Okamoto was a Japanese legend when they met in the locker room before a final-round duel at a Tucson, Ariz., event Rizzo’s rookie season. She only knew that Okamoto spoke little English and Rizzo was willing to help. They found a universal language playing gin rummy in the locker room that day.

“I took her under my wing,” Rizzo said. “I had no idea she was this Japanese superstar. I thought she was another rookie like me, but she became my best friend, a confidant and also a rival.”

Rizzo said she appreciated how Okamoto went out of her way to learn English and American customs, and Rizzo did the same when she played the Japanese Tour.

“We learned immersing ourselves in each other’s cultures,” Rizzo said. “It was appreciated and respected.”

Whether foreigners appreciate and respect the LPGA Tour’s desire to immerse them in English will play out during the next four months, the time the tour says it will take to finalize its policy.