Ladies European Tour
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The Ladies European Tour is a professional golf tour for women which was founded in 1979.
The U.S. based LPGA was founded in 1950, but women's professional golf was slower to get established in Europe. In 1978 the Women's Professional Golf Association (WPGA) was formed as part of Professional Golfers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland and a tour was established the following year. In 1988 the tour members decided to form an independent company, the Women Professional Golfers' European Tour Limited. This new company moved away from the PGA's at The Belfry and set up its own headquarters at the Tytherington Club in Cheshire. In 1998 the Tour changed its name to European Ladies' Professional Golf Association Limited and again in July 2000 to its current name, Ladies European Tour Limited. Like many UK-based sports organisations it is a company limited by guarantee, a legal structure which enables it to focus on maximising returns to its members through prize money, rather than on making profits for investors. The tour is run by a Board of Directors and a Players' Council. Most of the players on the tour are European, and the largest non-European contingent by far comes from Australia.
In July 2005 the tour dismissed its fifth chief executive in eight years as it continued to find it very difficult to compete effectively against the LPGA Tour for players and media attention, even in its home continent. However 2006 schedule shows some improvement in the situation, with an increase from eighteen official money events to twenty, and an uplift in prize money. The two richest events by far are the Evian Masters and the Women's British Open, which are co-sanctioned by the LPGA Tour and have prize funds of over €2.5 million and over €1.5 million respectively. The other eighteen events consist of five with prize funds of approximately €500,000 (three in 2005) and thirteen with prize funds of between €165,000 and €400,000. The five half million euro events are in Australia (co-sanctioned with the ALPG Tour), Switzerland, Sweden, Wales and Dubai.
Unlike in men's golf, the European and American tours do not share a common set of majors, although the Women's British Open is co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour and the LPGA Championship is recognised as a major by both organisations. The only other event on the Ladies European Tour with "major" status is the Evian Masters, which is played in France. The Evian Masters is not recognised as a major by the LPGA, but the LPGA co-sanctions the event as part of its regular schedule. The significance of this is limited as the LPGA Tour is so dominant in global women's golf that "women's majors" usually refers to the LPGA majors, even in Europe. In fact, the Ladies European Tour tacitly acknowledges this reality by not scheduling any of its tournaments to conflict with the three LPGA majors played in the U.S.
[edit] Schedule
The table below shows the 2006 schedule. The numbers in brackets after the winners' names show the number of career wins they had on the Ladies European Tour up to and including that event. This is only shown for members of the tour.
For the latest version of the tour schedule on the Ladies European Tour's website, including links to full results, click here.
[edit] Order of Merit winners
- This list of Order of Merit winners is incomplete.
- 2006 Laura Davies - England
- 2005 Iben Tinning - Denmark
- 2004 Laura Davies - England
- 2003 Sophie Gustafson - Sweden
- 2002 Paula Marti - Spain
- 2001 Raquel Carriedo-Tomas - Spain
- 2000 Sophie Gustafson - Sweden
- 1999 Laura Davies - England
- 1998 Helen Alfredsson - Sweden
- 1997 Alison Nicholas - England
- 1996 Laura Davies - England
- 1995 Annika Sörenstam - Sweden
- 1994 Liselotte Neumann - Sweden
- 1992 Laura Davies - England
- 1991
- 1990
- 1989
- 1988
- 1987 Dale Reid - Scotland
- 1986 Laura Davies - England
- 1985 Laura Davies - England
- 1984 Dale Reid - Scotland
- 1983
- 1982
- 1981
- 1980
- 1979
