Because of the nature and history of a sport, sometimes the lingo is based on a particular language. An example is fencing, in which the lingua franca is—er—French. Some words are Old French, sprinkled with Italian. But most fencers are familiar with the terms and tend to refer to, say, the fourth parry position as "quarte." The tidiest word for a quick answering thrust after parrying an opponent's attack is "riposte" (French, modification of Italian risposta, literally, answer, from rispondere to respond, from Latin respondçre. Date: 1707), as are most of the other terms in fencing. So a technical conversation between a couple of English or American fencers will sound to the uninitiated like a combination of English along with French and Italian gibberish.

I can see this sort of thing happening in all kinds of sports (and other fields, for that matter), but to insist that the practitioner of a particular sport learn to speak an entire language fluently just to be able to participate on the upper levels seems pretty draconian to me. And, as Kat says, "very exclusionary."

From Wikipedia:

The first game of golf for which records survive was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456, recorded in the archives of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now The Royal Burgess Golfing Society. The modern game of golf spread from Scotland to England and has now become a worldwide game, with golf courses in the majority of countries.

If the LPGA wants to require its members and participants to be fluent in one language, it strikes me that to be true to the origins of the game, the language should be Gaelic, with a strong Scots burr.

Don Firth