The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also known as the PGA Tour, as well as the PGA Tour Champions (age 50 and older) and the Korn Ferry Tour (for professional players who have not yet qualified to play on the PGA Tour), as well as the PGA Tour Canada, PGA Tour Latinoamérica, and formerly the PGA Tour China. The PGA Tour is a nonprofit organization[2] headquartered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, a suburb southeast of Jacksonville.[3]
Originally established by the Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA of America), it was spun off in December 1968 into a separate organization for tour players, as opposed to club professionals, the focal members of today's PGA of America. Originally the "Tournament Players Division", it adopted the name "PGA Tour" in 1975 and runs most of the week-to-week professional golf events on the tournament known as the PGA Tour, including The Players Championship, hosted at TPC Sawgrass; the FedEx Cup, with its finale at The Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club; and the biennial Presidents Cup. The remaining events on the PGA Tour are run by different organizations, as are the U.S.-based LPGA Tour for women and other men's and women's professional tours around the world.
The roots of the modern PGA Tour stretch back to April 10, 1916, when the Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) was formed.[4] The modern tour recognizes wins from this era as "PGA Tour" victories despite the formal founding of the tour as a separate entity coming much later.
By 1916, several prestigious golf tournaments offering prize money to the winner had been established in America, including the North and South Open, the Metropolitan Open, the Shawnee Open, the Western Open and the national championship, the U.S. Open. They formed the initial schedule of what came to be known much later as the "PGA Tour", with the addition of the PGA Championship in 1916. The Open Championship in the UK, the oldest golf tournament in the world founded in 1860, would become a PGA Tour event much later in 1995. All Open Championship wins dating back to 1860 were retroactively recognized as PGA Tour victories in 2002.[5]
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, various state open tournaments began, many organized by sections of the PGA. Tournaments recognized as PGA Tour wins from this era include the California Open, Connecticut Open, Florida Open, Maryland Open, Massachusetts Open, New Jersey State Open, New York State Open, Ohio Open, Oklahoma Open, Oregon Open, Pennsylvania Open Championship, Utah Open, Virginia Open and the Wisconsin State Open. This legacy lives on with the modern PGA Tour as the Valero Texas Open dates back to this era of state opens on the tour.
The tour, then known informally as "The Circuit" for professional golfers in the PGA,[6] became more formalized in 1929. A tournament committee was formed, consisting of Tommy Armour, Al Espinosa and J.J. Patterson.[1] In 1930, Bob Harlow was hired as manager of the PGA Tournament Bureau and worked to formalize a year-round schedule of tournaments.[7]