Ladies European Tour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Schedule
2 Order of Merit winners
3 See also
4 External link

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.

Dates	Tournament	Host country	Winner	Notes
20-22 Jan	Acer World Cup of Golf	South Africa	Liselotte Neumann and Annika Sorenstam (N/A)	Unofficial money team event.
2-5 Feb	ANZ Ladies Masters	Australia	Amy Yang (1)	Co-santioned with the ALPG Tour
27-30 Apr	Tenerife Ladies Open	Spain	Riikka Hakkarainen (1)
11-14 May	Open De España Femenino	Spain	Lynnette Brooky (4)
18-21 May	Ladies Swiss Open	Switzerland	Gwladys Nocera (1)
25-28 May	Vediorbis Open de France	France	Veronica Zorzi (2)
2-4 Jun	KLM Ladies Open	Netherlands	Stephanie Arricau (3)
14-17 Jun	Ladies Italian Open	Italy	Gwladys Nocera (2)
22-24 Jun	Ladies Open of Portugal	Portugal	Stephanie Arricau (4)
13-15 Jul	Ladies Central European Open	Hungary	Rebecca Hudson (1)
21-23 Jul	Catalonia Ladies Masters	Spain	Gwladys Nocera (3)
26-29 Jul	Evian Masters	France	Karrie Webb (N/A)	Co-sanctioned by the LPGA Tour
3-6 Aug	Women's British Open	England	Sherri Steinhauer (N/A)	Co-sanctioned by the LPGA Tour
10-13 Aug	Scandinavian TPC hosted by Annika	Sweden	Annika Sorenstam (14)
17-20 Aug	Wales Ladies Championship of Europe	Wales	Linda Wessberg (1)
25-27 Aug	SAS Masters	Norway	Laura Davies (35)
1-3 Sep	Finnair Masters	Finland	Virginie Lagoutte (2)
7-10 Sep	Nykredit Masters	Denmark	Karen Margrethe Juul (1)
14-17 Sep	Austrian Ladies Open	Austria	Sophie Gustafson (12)
6-8 Oct	BBC Radio Kent Ladies’ English Open	England	Cecilia Ekelundh (3)
26-29 Oct	Dubai Ladies Masters	United Arab Emirates	Annika Sorenstam (15)