LPGA

Ladies Professional Golf Association

Current season, competition or edition: 2017 LPGA Tour
Logo introduced in October 2007
Sport	Golf
Founded	1950
Founder	13 original LPGA players
Inaugural season	1950
Commissioner	Michael Whan
Country	United States, with events in other countries in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America
Most titles	Kathy Whitworth (88)
TV partner(s)	Golf Channel
Official website	LPGA.com

The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) is an American organization for female professional golfers. The organization is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida, and is best known for running the LPGA Tour, a series of weekly golf tournaments for elite female golfers from around the world.

Other "LPGA's" exist in other countries, each with a geographical designation in its name, but the U.S. organization is the first, largest, and best known. The LPGA is also an organization for female club and teaching professionals. This is different from the PGA Tour, which runs the main professional tours in the U.S. and, since 1968, has been independent of the club and teaching professionals' organization, the PGA of America.

The LPGA also administers an annual qualifying school similar to that conducted by the PGA Tour. Depending on a golfer's finish in the final qualifying tournament, she may receive full or partial playing privileges on the LPGA Tour. In addition to the main LPGA Tour, the LPGA also owns and operates the Symetra Tour, formerly the Futures Tour, the official developmental tour of the LPGA. Top finishers at the end of each season on that tour receive playing privileges on the main LPGA Tour for the following year.

In its 63rd season in 2012, The LPGA is the oldest continuing women's professional sports organization in the United States. It was founded in 1950 by a group of 13 golfers: Alice Bauer, Patty Berg, Bettye Danoff, Helen Dettweiler, Marlene Bauer Hagge, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Betty Jameson, Sally Sessions, Marilynn Smith, Shirley Spork, Louise Suggs, and Babe Zaharias. The LPGA succeeded the WPGA (Women's Professional Golf Association), which was founded in 1944 but stopped its limited tour after the 1948 season and officially ceased operations in December 1949.