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NOW GOLFWEEKTV: Hate to be Rude: Jerry Kelly
Jeff Rude’s “I Hate To Be Rude” column appears on Golfweek.com on Friday, the same day as his video show of the same name.• The LPGA’s intention to ensure its membership can speak conversational English is a win-win-win-win for the association, players, corporate sponsors and pro-am contestants. Everyone figures to benefit in the long run in terms of business opportunity, entertainment and enjoyment.
English proficiency isn’t relevant to playing golf but is important to enhancing golf in America, particularly an LPGA brand that features 121 international players and is hurting for sponsors. Improved communication should only help grow the women’s game and increase marketability for all players.
As PGA Tour veteran Peter Jacobsen has said often, pro-am day is more important than Sunday on a golf tour. It gives corporate America a chance to connect and players an opportunity to sell their product in a highly competitive sports marketplace.
It seems reasonable to want employees to better relate not only to customers but to those who underwrite their paychecks. Enhancing a pro-am experience for people who write large checks hurts no one.
The late basketball character Al McGuire figured his media schtick brought 25 percent of his income. LPGA players won’t be asked to imitate McGuire or recite Shakespeare, but they figure to help their own cause by speaking effective English in media interviews, victory speeches, pro-am rounds and relations with sponsors, fans and volunteers.
In an ideal world, golfers should be asked to speak only with their clubs. But we don’t live in a non-commercial vacuum. And the LPGA is far different from other sports leagues in that its primary playground is the United States and a growing number of its stars don’t speak the native language. In its situation, effective communication becomes a 15th club in the bag.
South Koreans won eight of 11 LPGA tournaments at one point this year. They should be applauded for that. Of the 45 South Koreans on tour, an estimated dozen or so use English translators. They should be tutored for that.
Now the hard part. The LPGA needs to ensure the focus is more educational and caring than punitive. Learning is more desirable if the teacher holds a smile rather than blade. As it stands now, anyone failing an oral English evaluation next year faces suspension. A better tack might start with fun seminars on the way to two-stroke penalties.
• As an aside, I have played in one PGA Tour Wednesday pro-am and coincidentally my pro was a South Korean, K.J. Choi. He speaks limited English and didn’t say much, but he was delightful and the group had fun.
But Choi was just one such pro in the pro-am. Not one half.
• The failure to speak English isn’t the only perceived pro-am problem. Sometimes it’s the failure to speak, period.
At a Hawaiian tournament in the late 1990s I ran to a man who spent about $13,000 altogether to play in pro-am. He drew one of the world’s top-ranked players but said he had a “terrible” time because that player didn’t talk to the amateur partners until the 17th hole.
This year a PGA Tour player said the worst part of his week was schmoozing at a pro-am.
Apparently more than language needs to be taught.
• Things can change over the holiday week, but here in the 11th hour is one man’s counsel for Ryder Cup captain’s picks. Ian Poulter and Paul Casey for Europe, and J.B. Holmes, Steve Stricker, Sean O’Hair and Bubba Watson for America.
• Volatility, of course, is the biggest change from the first year of the FedEx Cup playoffs. And biggest improvement.
Last year, only two players advanced to the second playoff event from outside the top 120. Rich Beem made the biggest leap, gaining 21 spots from 134th to 113th. This year, 15 players moved into the top 120 after the Barclays, and five players jumped at least 50 places.
• I saw where Phil Mickelson, not at his best lately, is still the No. 2 golfer in the world. First thought was, “Whose world? Not Padraig Harrington’s world.”
Then it came. Madison Avenue’s world.
Posted: 8/29/2008
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