What Does PGA Stand For?

What does PGA stand for in golf?

Note the apostrophe after the s in Golfers'. The name means an association of many golfers, so the apostrophe sits after the plural. People often drop it in casual writing, but official names keep it.

PGA of America vs the PGA Tour

This is the most common confusion around the letters, and it is worth sorting out.

• PGA of America: founded in 1916, it is a membership group for club professionals, the people who teach lessons, manage golf shops and run courses. It also runs the PGA Championship, one of the four major championships in men's golf.
• PGA Tour: the organization that runs the main weekly series of professional men's tournaments in the United States. It began as part of the PGA of America and split off in the late 1960s to become its own body.

So a local teaching pro and a tour winner can both be linked to "PGA," but through different organizations. Britain has its own Professional Golfers' Association, which is older still, and many other countries have national PGAs.

Women's golf and the LPGA

The top women's tour in the United States uses the letters LPGA, for Ladies Professional Golf Association. Notice that its name says "Golf" rather than "Golfers'." The LPGA runs its own tournaments and also has a teaching division for women golf professionals. It is a separate group from both the PGA of America and the PGA Tour.

If you like word puzzles, the GOLF acronym page explains a popular but false story about what the word golf is supposed to stand for.

Non golf meanings of PGA

In other fields, PGA has two well known meanings:

• Producers Guild of America: a trade group for film, television and media producers, known for its yearly awards. Clue: movies, credits, awards season.
• Pin grid array: a way of packaging computer chips, where rows of pins on the bottom of a CPU fit into holes in a socket. Clue: motherboards, sockets, bent pins.

In a sports headline, though, it is golf every time.

Saying and writing PGA

Say the letters one by one: "P G A." Write them in capitals with no periods. Put "a" in front of it, as in "a PGA event," since the letter P is said "pee." Some example sentences:

• "She took lessons from a PGA pro at the public course."
• "He earned his PGA Tour card after a strong season."
• "The PGA Championship is one of golf's four majors."
• "PGA stands for Professional Golfers' Association, with the apostrophe after the s."

For other sports letters, see NBA and NCAA, or browse the famous acronyms hub.