It wasn’t so very long ago – only about three years in fact – that Ty Votaw stepped aside, leaving the LPGA to search for the seventh Commissioner in its then 55-year history.  At the time, Annika Sorenstam looked on her way to challenging the career records of Mickey Wright and Kathy Whitworth, marketable young stars like Cristie Kerr, Paula Creamer and Lorena Ochoa were in abundance, and, most tantalizingly, Michelle Wie seemed capable of lifting the entire enterprise upon her shoulders in the not-too-distant future.  I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time to know what motivated Votaw to quit, but I did know enough to make one cogent statement:
 
“They shouldn’t have any trouble finding a quality replacement because the way the tour is positioned, nobody could screw this up.”
 
Guess I was wrong.
 
Truthfully, I didn’t join all the naysayers who slammed the eventual choice, Carolyn Bivens, when she quickly got into a spat about photo rights with, among others, the Associated Press (talk about people who buy their ink by the gallon!), nor did I dwell too much on the cries of one or two tournament sponsors who felt pushed aside by the new regime.  Business, after all, is business – or something like that.
 
But this time Ms. Bivens has hit the jackpot.
 
Anyone with enough interest in golf to read this website is by now aware of the LPGA’s plan to make fluency in English mandatory among its players by 2009 – an utterly mind boggling idea that feels like it was pulled from a different century (and not even the 20th…).  Make no mistake, the idea of making players more sponsor and media friendly is a solid one; to a large degree, the tour relies on sponsors for its very existence, so making pro-am or press conferences easier is a more-than-reasonable goal, but…
 
How did Ms, Bivens not think this would be a P.R. disaster?
 
How did she not figure that it would strike many as discriminatory?  That some might even see it as an underhanded way to slow down the wave of young, highly skilled Asian players currently washing over the tour?  That it would certainly raise the hackles of the politically correct just on general principle?  Or, most tellingly, that with the LPGA being based in Florida, such a rule wouldn’t quickly get the attention of Sunshine State lawmakers wondering if it violates state laws preventing discrimination in places of public accommodation (which, as the Casey Martin case taught us, professional golf events most certainly are)?
 
And here’s another concern which might have struck Bivens & Co. as problematical: At present, the LPGA tour is far and away the tour in women’s golf.  Whereas the PGA Tour is occasionally overshadowed by events on the European or Asian circuits (where many foreign stars play as frequently as they do here), the LPGA holds a virtual monopoly.  It’s nearest competitor, the Ladies European Tour, is essentially a minor league by comparison, while the Japanese and Korean ladies circuits are, by LPGA standards, irrelevant.  But if a significant number of Asian players choose not to comply with Bivens’ edict, what will happen?  Since it’s unlikely that any such players will opt for retirement, they will surely head for the LET or Japan – very possibly the first step in those circuits closing the gap on the American tour just as the E Tour so effectively has on the men’s side.
 
So why risk the monopoly?
 
We’re only just scratching the surface on this but already, it would appear that the English-only rule has the word D-E-B-A-C-L-E written all over it – in bright red neon.  Having already garnered the LPGA all manner of unwanted headlines, it is the type of story which is not likely to drift away in the next sports week’s news cycle.  Short of a complete scrapping of the entire idea, this mess figures to get a lot worse before it gets better – and it’s really very difficult to envision it all ending well.
 
What were they thinking?