Professional Golfers' Association, (with or without the apostrophe), is the usual term for a professional association in men's golf. It is often abbreviated to PGA. There are several PGAs around the world, including:
- Professional Golfers' Association (Great Britain & Ireland)
- Professional Golfers' Association of America
The women's equivalent is Ladies Professional Golf Association, commonly abbreviated to LPGA. The United States association is called the LPGA. 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 (which runs the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour)
- PGA European Tour (which runs the European Tour, Challenge Tour and European Seniors Tour)
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 States, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ireland, are focused on the needs of the majority of professional golfers who work as club or teaching professionals, as opposed to being tournament professionals.
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or association:
“So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)