Libba Galloway, the deputy commissioner of the LPGA tour explained thusly:

“We live in a sports-entertainment environment. 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.”

If the LPGA is working under the assumption that all publicity – even horribly bad, bigotry tinged publicity -- is good, the the organization is on the right track.

But just to mix it up a bit, the LPGA might want to start peppering in some feel-good angles.

The ladies game has gone through a rough patch. The tour’s best player, Annika Storenstam, announced her retirement at age 38. Meanwhile, the ladies game most well known figure and biggest money maker is Michelle Wie, a cute, but mediocre Hawaiian teen who yet to win a women’s tournament yet has more endorsement deals than Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Bros.

Most of the LPGA’s top ranked players are foreigners, including the exciting young duffers like Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, Taiwan’s Yani Tseng and Norwegian Suzann Petterson. But this English requirement is largely perceived to be aimed at the tour ever growing roster of South Koreans, including the top ranked Inbee Park, Ji-Lai Shin and Jeong Jang. Forty-five of the LPGA’s international players hail from South Korea.

If you’ve heard this type of English-only B.S. before, you were probably around in the early 1960s, when then-San Francisco Giants manager Alvin Dark, a dyed in the wool Southerner, announced that while at the ballpark, the Giants Spanish speaking players – of which there were many, including the greats Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal -- were required to speak English, and English only.

Dark also was quoted as saying: “You can't make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you can get from white players."

Dark reasoned that that it would create more unity on the racially diverse Giants roster if everyone spoke the same language. The players were incensed and threatened a boycott before Dark rescinded his demand.

The LPGA has its own rationale, too. And surprise, surprise, it has to do with money.

Unlike team sports such as baseball, professional golfers have more direct contact with sponsors. Representatives of the major corporations and their guests provide the prize money and regularly brush shoulders with the players at pro-am events and regular tournaments.

The LPGA fears that if the players can't sufficiently entertain the representatives of cell phone companies, jewelers and big box stores the money will dry up.

So what better way to fix the perceived problem than by hitting it with a sledge hammer?

The LPGA hopes that out of fear, these Korean gals will hit the Berlitz tapes hard and heavy. Has the LPGA ever thought of investing in interpreters, the way major league baseball has done for years with its Japanese imported players?

If baseball had imposed such a policy, it would have denied us such superstar talents as s Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and Kosuke Fukudome whose transition to the major leagues has gone smoother because they don’t have to worry about a language barrier.

So far the public outcry has been muted, golf’s demographics doesn’t exactly include the most progressive thinkers in the world.

But the LPGA continues to push this back-water idea, which runs roughshod over human rights laws (not to mention common decency) that ban discrimination based on race, nationality or religion.

If the association continues, it willl be eliminating the very performers that make it a competitive sport and not just a country club get-together.