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Professional Golfers' Association, (with or without the apostrophe), is the usual term for a professional association in men's
golfGolf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
. It is often abbreviated to
PGA. There are several PGAs around the world, including:
The women's equivalent is
Ladies Professional Golf Association, commonly abbreviated to LPGA. The United States association is called the
LPGAThe LPGA, in full the Ladies Professional Golf Association, is an American organization for female professional golfers. The organization, whose headquarters is in Daytona Beach, Florida, is best known for running the LPGA Tour, a series of weekly golf tournaments for elite female golfers from...
. Other women's bodies have territorial designations in their names, like LPGA of Japan or LPGA of Korea.
The organisations which run the world's two leading professional golf tours have the initials PGA in their names, but they are now independent of the Professional Golfers' Associations which established them:
- PGA Tour
The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...
(which runs the PGA Tour, Champions TourThe Champions Tour, a golf tour run by the PGA Tour, hosts a series of events annually in the United States and the United Kingdom for golfers 50 years of age and older. Many of the PGA Tour's most successful golfers have gone on to play on the Champions Tour.The Senior PGA Championship, founded in...
and Nationwide TourThe Nationwide Tour is the developmental tour for the U.S.-based PGA Tour, and features professional golfers who have either failed to score well enough at that level's Qualifying School to earn their PGA Tour card, or who have done so but then failed to win enough money to stay at that level...
)
- PGA European Tour
The PGA European Tour is an organization which operates the three leading men's professional golf tours in Europe: the elite European Tour, the European Seniors Tour and the developmental Challenge Tour. Its headquarters are at Wentworth Club in Virginia Water, Surrey, England...
(which runs the European Tour, Challenge TourThe Challenge Tour is the second tier men's professional golf tour in Europe. It is operated by the PGA European Tour and as with on the main European Tour and the European Seniors Tour, some of the events are played outside of Europe...
and European Seniors TourThe European Seniors Tour is a professional tour for male golfers aged 50 and over run by the PGA European Tour.The Tour was founded in 1992. In 2008 it had a total prize fund of €7,729,284, so it is much further behind the U.S.-based Champions Tour in relative prize money than the main European...
)
Originally, PGAs were the central bodies for all forms of professional golf in their territories, but now some of them, including those of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and
IrelandIreland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, are focused on the needs of the majority of professional golfers who work as club or teaching professionals, as opposed to being
tournament professionalsProfessional golf tours are the means by which otherwise unconnected professional golf tournaments are organised into a regular schedule. There are separate tours for men and women, with each tour being based in a specific geographical region, although some of their tournaments may be held in other...
.