Playing the race card

PLATFORM:FOR A short period five years ago, Australian golfer Jan Stephenson became a hate figure for right-thinking liberal sports fans, writes Richard Gillis

Stephenson was glamorous in that US country club sort of way - all blonde bouffant and sponsored sun visor - and played for many years on the US Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) women's tour.

Her profile was raised following an infamous magazine interview, where she stumbled blinking into the debate on globalisation in sport. "The Asians are killing our tour," she said. "They've taken it over." She went on to criticise the tour's Korean players for "their lack of emotion, their refusal to speak English", and for lacking sex appeal.

Stephenson was referring to a new generation of South Korean players emerging at that time as a genuine force in the women's game. Today, the LPGA has 121 players from 26 countries, and 45 of these are from South Korea.

Twelve of the top 25 players in the Money list rankings are Asian, including nine Koreans. Five are American, five are from Europe, and one each is from Mexico (world number one Lorena Ochoa), Brazil and Australia.

Some trace the genesis of South Korea's golfing boom back to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. The theory goes that the games made sport a more socially acceptable pastime for women - which, if true, bodes well for the sport following Beijing.

There are also powerful role models such as Se Ri Pak, who won the first two major championships she entered in 1998, and who remains a heroine at home. To this group can be added a number of second-generation Korean Americans such as Michelle Wie, the child star who became a multimillionaire overnight when she turned professional at age 16 and landed huge contracts with Nike and Sony, among others.

In 2003, Stephenson was ostracised for her views, which were dismissed as racist. However, over the past couple of weeks, she has resurfaced after the LPGA announced a new policy requiring its players to speak English.

The controversial language guidelines include a stipulation that those who have been LPGA members for two years will face suspension if they are unable to pass an oral evaluation of their English skills.

"I've finally been vindicated," Stephenson told reporters.

The underlying reason for the LPGA's proposal is commercial: it is worried about the effect of the Korean players' success on television ratings and interest from sponsors.

"I have friends who will turn the TV off or find other things to watch if Koreans are in the lead," says former player Carol Mann, in defence of the LPGA.

"They have to protect the business of the future and the television package they are trying to design. So I think it is terrific."

Interestingly, the initial response of sponsors has been to distance themselves from the policy, which the LPGA has said it intends to review. But the issues it faces have a universal application.

Sport is very keen on globalisation right now. Football clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool often point to vast numbers of people they claim form their "Asian fan base", as though this is a homogenous mass whose only purpose is to buy subscriptions for MUTV, or Steve Gerrard duvet covers.

Generally, sport's definition of globalisation is very narrow and, in the face of a free labour market, protectionism tends to be its default position.

Despite new territories being opened to tennis, golf and basketball, most of these sports are propped up by money taken from western European and north American television networks. The underlying, but largely unproven, assumption is that these television viewers will turn off if power shifts too far.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter's proposed 6 + 5 rule is effectively a quota on the number of foreign players playing for European club sides.

As head of Fifa, his role is to promote the sport as played between national teams, and so protect the commercial value of the Fifa World Cup.

Patriotism is Fifa's trump card, and Blatter worries that its dilution will weaken his "unique selling point" - more than one-third of all goals at this summer's Euro 2008 were scored by players born outside of the country for which they were playing.

Likewise, the failure of British and Irish teams to qualify for Euro 2008 brought with it cries that the Premier League is being "overrun by foreigners", stealing our goalkeeping spots and muscling out homegrown talent.

"What can I do?" protest club managers, who use Nigerian right backs just like the rest of us use Polish plumbers: cheap and hard-working, compared to their domestic counterparts.

Stephenson and Blatter make for unlikely bedfellows: both are playing the race card and both believe they have the support of the fans who pay their wages.

The unpalatable truth is that they might be right.