"Mister Crampton," said the woman, "a friend of mine played with you in a pro-am last year and has bet me $10 that you won't say five words to me all day."

For more than a few seconds, Crampton silently looked her up and down before uttering the immortal phrase: "Sorry lady, you lose."

Apocryphal or not, that amusing/appalling (take your pick) incident failed to do any lasting harm to the glad-handing and oh-so corporate pro-am system, one that has survived and flourished for many years now on circuits all over the globe. Yet the LPGA Tour – the biggest and richest in the women's game – apparently still finds it necessary to insist that its 45 Korean members learn a foreign language in order to show their invariably English-speaking "best friends" a good time. If those women, who are (Mexico's Lorena Ochoa apart) largely dominating the largely US-based tour, fail to do so by the end of 2009 and to an arbitrary level that remains unclear, they will be summarily suspended from their jobs and livelihoods.

Now, quite apart from the obviously tricky legal aspects of such a distasteful and questionable move – and the equally self-evident irony in having those who, like, routinely mangle the, like, English-language on a, like, daily basis, claiming the upper hand in any linguistic argument – such nonsense represents nothing short of blatant and specific racism. Note that, despite today's LPGA tour being more diverse than it has ever been, only the Koreans were summoned to answer for their perceived verbal shortcomings.

Just why one nation should be singled out is not difficult to discern. For the US-based LPGA, the by-now routine domination of the tour by foreign-born players – a group largely made up of Koreans – is something of a commercial problem. Twenty-four LPGA events have been played so far this year and in 18 of those a non-US national has finished first. Seven of those 18 victories – including the two most recent major championships – have been recorded by Korean women.

For Middle America, such a phenomenon is the golfing equivalent of sleeping pills. For it is a sad and insular fact of life that Wally Hamburger III and his wife, Betty-Sue, have little or no interest in watching an apparently homogenous group of "furrners" beating up on homegrown twinkies like Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis and Cristie Kerr.

Americans, perhaps understandably, want to watch Americans winning things. Which is just one reason why it is so important for the nation's increasingly beleaguered Ryder Cup side to put up at least a halfway decent showing in next month's matches at Valhalla. If Europe delivers a third successive shellacking to Uncle Sam's nephews, the commercial and economic future of the biennial event is in real danger of becoming diminished.

Back at the LPGA, there is at least no danger of an increasingly outclassed European side beating its American equivalent in the Solheim Cup. At least for the moment, however, most of the very best players in the game hail from Asia and most of them from Korea. Hence this rather obvious attempt at victimisation.

"I'm not sure of the ins and outs of this whole thing, but if it applies only to the Korean players, it looks awful," says Catriona Matthew, Scotland's number one woman golfer and an LPGA regular. "In fact, it is awful. I can see it making some sort of sense if we are talking about every non-English speaking player, but even then it seems a bit harsh.

"To me, the whole thing is a bit odd in that I can't think of too many players – Korean or not – to whom this would apply. After two years on tour, 99 per cent of the players know enough English to get by. Which begs the question: Why is the LPGA bothering?

"In most cases I have found that the players can understand English but they are less comfortable speaking it in a public forum. That is understandable. It's easy to get something wrong in a second language. The bottom line is that the LPGA has more important issues it could be focusing on."

That is certainly true. In fact, because of the currently parlous state of the US economy, the LPGA has been looking more and more beyond America's borders. This year, the tour has tournaments in Canada, Singapore, Mexico, France, the UK, Japan and – oh, the irony – South Korea. As of today, however, there has been no word on whether the likes of Creamer, Gulbis and Kerr will have to learn, say, an acceptable level of French when competing in the Evian Masters.

Of course, that the LPGA and its increasingly hapless commissioner, Carolyn Givens, should blunder into such an obvious faux pas (that's French for "boo-boo," Ms Givens) is no real surprise. This, after all, is the same organisation/person who earlier this year banned caddies from retrieving and returning balls to their players on the practice green. I kid you not.

Although this terribly important rule tends to change from week-to-week, it typically goes something like this: Between 8am and 4pm no caddie is allowed on the practice green. If a player is chipping on to the green, the caddie can retrieve and return the balls – but only if there are more holes available than players practising. Quite.

Just last week, Givens went even further down the road to nowhere when she announced that all media would have to undergo "background checks" in order to cover an LPGA event. On a circuit already gasping for the oxygen that is publicity, this is nothing short of madness.

Oh yes, one last thing. When Givens recently spoke with the assembled band of Koreans she did so in, you guessed it, English. No bilingual requirement for her; no sirree Bob (American for, "this is all about us.")