Golfers debate LPGA's policy

English requirement already draws fire

NORTON, MASS. -- Imagine what could have happened to Angel Cabrera if he belonged to a tour that required its players to speak English.

A powerful Argentine who rose from an impoverished childhood, he won the U.S. Open last year at Oakmont by holding off Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. In the hours after the trophy presentation, Cabrera made his way through a maze of media interviews in Spanish with an interpreter at his side.

Under a new LPGA Tour policy effective next year, Cabrera might have been suspended. Or, he might not have played at all if an official on that tour deemed he was ineffective in English.

"You don't have to speak English to play golf," Cabrera said Thursday in Spanish, joining a chorus of male players perplexed by the LPGA Tour's decision to be punish women golfers for not speaking English in pro-ams, trophy presentations and media interviews.

Golfweek magazine first reported the LPGA Tour's new English-only policy Monday, leaving the tour scrambling to explain and defend itself over the past several days as the issue has stayed on the forefront of public discussion.

The LPGA Tour didn't get this much attention when Annika Sorenstam said she was retiring.

"We have been puzzled, if not surprised, by some of the reactions," said deputy commissioner Libba Galloway, who previously was the LPGA's top attorney. "We see this as a pro-international move."

Players won't have to be fluent, rather what Galloway described as "effective."

Padraig Harrington, who has won the last two majors, wondered if the LPGA Tour is taking on too much. Like others, he wants to know how much English a player is supposed to learn to be "effective."

"Surely if you can say, 'Hello,' that's English. Is that good enough?" he said. "Who draws the line about how many words you've got to know in English? What if you have a person who genuinely struggles with learning a new language; they have a learning disability? That's tough to ask somebody with a learning disability, who might have found golf as the saving grace in their life, to ask them to learn a different language or else you can't play.

"There's a lot of different issues to that," he said. "It's a big step to actually put it out there."

Cabrera understands the importance of speaking English, and he realizes it only hurts him.

What troubles the big Argentine is why language should affect performance inside the ropes.

"I remember what [Roberto] de Vicenzo once said to me," Cabrera said. "If you shoot under 70, everybody will understand you. If you don't, they won't want to talk to you, anyway."