As expected the initial reactions to Beth Ann Baldry's exclusive on the LPGA's new English-speaking requirement were not positive and raised several major questions. We'll get to those in a moment, but having 24 hours to sit on this it strikes me that the hypocrisy here is truly breathtaking. As the LPGA struggles to get sponsors and takes more and more events to Asia, they are instituted a racist policy that could ultimately weed out the number of South Korean players.

In the AP story (Doug Ferguson?), Angela Park says:

...born in Brazil of South Korean heritage and raised in the United States -- said the policy is fair and good for the tour and its international players.

"A lot of Korean players think they are being targeted, but it's just because there are so many of them," Park said.

Seon-Hwa Lee, the only Asian with multiple victories this year, said she works with an English tutor in the winter. Her ability to answer questions without the help of a translator has improved in her short time on tour.

"The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors," Lee said. "Everybody understands."

"That's why I don't think this is an overall bad thing," Dottie Pepper, the former LPGA star and current golf analyst, said of the LPGA tour's new policy requiring its member golfers to speak English or face suspension. "And I think it also can really help the players become more comfortable in the environment they play."

The LPGA policy says players who have been on the tour for two years can be suspended if they fail an oral evaluation of their English proficiency starting at the end of the 2009 season.

The tour provides tutoring and language-learning software to its players and will work with those who fail the test.

"It's something that has been coming about gradually," said LPGA deputy commissioner Libba Galloway, who added that only a few of the organization's members can't speak English. "We're more of an international tour now, but we're an American-based tour and the players need the tools to interact with fans and sponsors. One of those tools is to speak English."

No major U.S. sports leagues, however, require players to speak English. Nor do the PGA Tour or ATP.

"We are proud to have tournaments in 30 countries and players from over 100 competing in them and have no plans to impose a common language on them," ATP spokesman Kris Dent said.

Eunsook Lee, executive director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium in Los Angeles, finds the new policy ironic coming on the heels of the Olympics, which she said were about fostering understanding. "It sounds like a step backward for golf," she said.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said a language requirement could be in violation of state law.

"Florida law prohibits discrimination in public accommodations," he said. "They may well violate Florida discrimination laws because language is a key element of person's national origin. People should be judged on their ability to perform a job. English fluency has no more to do with the ability to play 18 holes of golf than whether you walk 18 holes or ride 18 holes."

Galloway, however, said the LPGA can stand its legal ground. "Organizations and businesses in general have the right to make requirements on skill sets necessary for their employers," she said. "We as a membership organization have the right to establish obligations that our members must adhere to in order to do the things fundamental to conduct our business."

The rule wouldn’t be in effect if the Executive Committee wasn’t on board. The LPGA Board of Directors has 18 members, 12 of them who are players. The PGA Tour, on the other hand, has a nine-member board, and only four are players. As a result, the LPGA board, by sheer numbers, speaks more to the will of the overall membership.

However, it should be noted that every one of the 12 players on the board is American. Despite having the second-largest demographic group on the LPGA (behind Americans), there are no South Koreans on the board.

It makes sense that players who don't speak English should try to learn the language. Most players do try, and the LPGA makes the Rosetta Stone language-training program available to its members. But it can take a long time to get comfortable in a foreign language. My wife taught college English for nearly 30 years, often to people for whom English was a second or third language. A certain percentage of these students never became fluent in English, no matter how hard they worked. Canada and the United States are full of immigrants who can't speak English after years of taking lessons.

Smacking a two-year time period on golfers to learn English, then, smacks of xenophobia in the extreme. The idea is offensive, and its implementation is sure to generate hostility and anxiety.

The LPGA could lose some tremendous players if it's not careful. Imagine a scenario where a player who can't speak English to LPGA standards wins a major championship in her rookie year. She has two years to learn English or face suspension. She doesn't learn it, and she's suspended. The LPGA says it will provide tutoring and then do another evaluation, but there are no guarantees the lessons will take.

It's an American tour? The LPGA is in Canada, Singapore, Mexico, France, England, South Korea and Japan. Should Paula Creamer have to speak Korean if she plays in South Korea? Should Natalie Gulbis have to speak Spanish if she plays the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico come November?

The fault isn't with players who can't speak English. They are who they are. The LPGA is running scared. It needs to embrace golf as a global game and welcome foreign players, including those who don't speak English.

Instead, the LPGA Tour is threatening those players. When it comes to players who don't speak English "properly," it appears LPGA should stand for "Ladies, Please Go Away." Just watch the blowback from this one.

But Fernando Valenzuela hardly ever did an organized interview in English. Vladimir Guerrero doesn't do them now, and neither does Bartolo Colon or Ichiro Suzuki. Neither do K.J. Choi or Shigeki Maruyama on the PGA Tour.

It's not that they can't speak English. Most of them can at least fake it. They just don't want to be ridiculed because they can't speak smoothly in the American vernacular. They also fear saying something impolitic or inaccurate. As we all can. Hey, even Joe Biden sprains his tongue.

The American players are fully behind the English rule. They figure that if the Koreans are learning proper verb conjugation, they won't be practicing as much and, therefore, beating American brains out every week.

 "I am of a strong belief that, yes, we need to learn to communicate," Kane, a 12-year tour veteran, told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. "But whether or not you can communicate shouldn't determine whether or not you have a card on the LPGA Tour."

NEW YORK --- Making their last visit to the venerable House That Ruth Built, the Red Sox tonight started this three-game series against the Yankees with a rousing 7-3 victory over the Bombers before a Yankee Stadium crowd of 55,058.

Tim Wakefield, who before the game was activated after being placed on the 15-day disabled list Aug. 12 (tightness right shoulder), showed no ill effects after he picked up the win to even his record at 8-8. Wakefield went five innings and allowed three runs on eight hits, including a pair of solo homers by Johnny Damon in the first and fifth innings.

The Sox erupted for seven runs on 14 hits, chasing Yankees starter Andy Pettitte (L, 13-10) from the game in the fifth after he allowed six runs on 10 hits. The Sox rallied from a 2-1 deficit with two runs in the third on RBI hits by Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay and then broke it open with three runs in the fifth.

Justin Masterson helped Manny Delcarmen out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh when he induced Alex Rodriguez to ground into a double play on just two pitches.

Jonathan Papelbon picked up the save by striking out A-Rod with two out and two aboard in the bottom of the ninth.

As bad as it looks for Paul Azinger, things may not be quite so peachy in the Euro team room after Nick Dougherty voiced what appears to be the prevailing mood on the European Tour: Ian Poulter is playing the Deutsche Bank this week because he knows he's getting one of Faldo's two Captain's picks. James Corrigan reports:

Nick Dougherty was brave enough to articulate what most were thinking here on the range yesterday as the news circulated of Ian Poulter's late withdrawal from this week's Johnnie Walker Championship. "All I can think of is that he's been given the nod," said Dougherty. And so the great Ryder Cup conspiracy theory gathered momentum. True or not true it has given the build-up to Nick Faldo's wildcards announcement on Sunday night a fascinating edge.

The golfing world has only come up with two answers: first, Poulter has raised the white flag; and second, Poulter knows something the rest don't. Many here have already widely agreed that the flamboyant Englishman, the golfing street-fighter, is as likely to raise a white flag as he is to start wearing beige and, to them, that leaves only one explanation. And it is one that could just land Faldo in the middle of a storm when he eventually turns up at Gleneagles on Sunday lunchtime.

Not that Dougherty is ready to lambast the six-time major champion. Indeed, Faldo is his mentor. The young Liverpudlian was merely saying what he, and others such as Oliver Wilson – the player currently in the last qualifying spot – take to be the logical justification for Poulter's baffling actions.

"When I saw Ian's name down, I was impressed he was coming back," said Dougherty, who is himself in with a squeak of taking Wilson's place should he finish in the top two this week. "I've always thought Ian made his plans depending on his conversations with Nick."

John Hawkins, writing about the popularity of Ridgewood in this week's Golf World:

Although the Barclays is scheduled to return to its old site in what amounts to a 2011 cameo, it won't be a year too late -- Ridgewood was as big a hit as you'll find among 144 guys with $10 million on the line. "Best golf course we've played all year," said Tom Pernice Jr., not the easiest man to please. The old-school look and imaginative medley of holes make this A.W. Tillinghast design a keeper, which doesn't explain why the tour will follow its commercial nose and flee to snazzy-but-raw Liberty National for the 2009 gathering.

"If this one's a 10, that one's a 2," said a veteran who played next year's site last week. But enough on the past and the future, especially when the present packs so much relevance.

NEW YORK --- Manny Delcarmen was no sooner in the game when he found himself departing it after loading the bases with one out in the bottom of the seventh by issuing a pair of walks to Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu around a single to right by Derek Jeter.

Justin Masterson came into the game to face Alex Rodriguez with the bases loaded.

Masterson got out of the jam when he induced A-Rod to ground into a double play, which was masterfully turned by Alex Cora. The Yankee Stadium crowd of 55,058 really let A-Rod have it, raining down boos on the third baseman.

The Sox preserved their 7-3 lead and went to the eighth to face Edwar Ramirez.

NEW YORK --- Manny Delcarmen, who recorded his first save of the season after closing closed out Sunday's 6-5 victory over the Blue Jays in 11 innings, came into tonight's game in the bottom of the seventh in relief of Javier Lopez (1 inning, 1 strikeout).

Manager Terry Francona also made some position changes, switching Kevin Youkilis from third to first, Jed Lowrie from short to third, and inserting Alex Cora at short. First baseman Jeff Bailey departed.

NEW YORK --- The Sox threatened to blow the game wide open when Brian Bruney walked the bases loaded, but he allowed just one run to score when Jason Bay's sacrifice fly to left pushed across Dustin Pedroia to give the Sox a 7-3 lead.

Javier Lopez came into the game in the bottom of the sixth in relief of Tim Wakefield (5 innings, 8 hits, 3 runs, 3 earned, 1 walk, 1 strikeout, 2 home runs). Lopez pitched a tidy 1-2-3 inning. Lopez ended it by striking out Robinson Cano on three pitches, getting the second baseman to go down flailing wildly at 92-mile per hour fastball that sent his bat sailing into the stands behind the Yankees dugout.

No one was injured. The bat was recovered. And the band played on.

Sox lead, 7-3, with David Robertson now on the mound in the seventh for the Yankees.

NEW YORK --- Johnny Damon continued to feast on Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, taking the Sox starter deep to right for a solo homer with one out in the bottom of the fifth.

It was Damon's second homer of the game, 11th of the season, and 11th multi-homer game of his career. The last time Damon had two homers in a game was July 30, 2006, vs. Tampa Bay.

Sox spokesman John Blake just passed through the press box with the following update on Bartolo Colon's rehab outing at Lehigh Valley: Colon pitched 3 innings and gave up four runs (three earned) with one walk, and three strikeouts. He threw 60 pitches, 37 for strikes, and allowed all four runs in the second inning and came back and struck out the side in the third.