Are we still in America?

I know this is supposed to be about Idaho and Utah sports, but something came across the wire today that absolutely irked me.

The LPGA is forcing all its players to know English by the end of next year.

Golf Magazine Senior Editor Michael Walker wrote an editorial about this which pretty much sums up my thoughts: check that out here.

Here's my thing -- this is not, as one clueless tournament director said in the first article, an American tour. It's the "Ladies Professional Golf Association," not "Ladies Professional Golf of America." Its best two players over the past few years, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, are not American. Walker uses the exact stats in his column, but something like half of the top players are east Asian.

Two of the tour's four major events are played outside of the US, in France and Great Britain (and while English is spoken in the latter of the two, it ain't the same kind we speak over here). More than half of its players are from a country other than America. So why don't we force every single person on the tour to know all languages?

Sure, the point is for players to be able to better interact with sponsors and playing partners at pro-am tours. So, we going to force the sponsors of the tournament in Paris to get with the program? Tell the CEO of Evian that he can't play unless he can understand every word of Will Ferrell's ESPY acceptance speech on behalf of Tiger Woods? Yeah, right.

This is still America, right? Last I checked, we don't have a national language. We're supposed to be a melting pot where people from different cultures can come together and co-exist peacefully. These golfers aren't even trying to become American citizens -- they just want to ply their trade here, among other countries. Its ridiculous to force them to conform to an arbitrary standard just because we can.