Many professional tournaments for girls were staged throughout the Nineteen Twenties and 30s vital players from this era include Glenna Collett from the United States and Joyce Wethered of Nice Britain. It wasn't till the Nineteen Forties that efforts began in earnest to make a skilled golf organization for women. The first, the Womens Skilled Golf Association (WPGA), was chartered in 1944. Standout players soon emerged, including Patty Berg, Louise Suggs, Betty Jameson, and, particularly, the multisport legend Mildred Didrikson Zaharias. Even Zahariass popularity, but, may not ensure success for the WPGA, which folded in 1949. Nevertheless, it proved at intervals its brief existence the requirement for a professional womens organization.

The Ladies Skilled Golf Association (LPGA) was incorporated in August 1950 by the aforementioned golfers and eight others. Funding for LPGA tournaments was at first thus poor that golfers themselves performed many of the organizational tasks and course maintenance chores. Soon, but, the introduction of the Weathervane series of tournaments (a series of 4 thirty six-hole tournaments that offered a $three,000 prize for every tournament and a $five,000 prize for the general winner of the four) proved sufficiently standard to sustain the organization throughout the decade.

The play of such outstanding golfers as Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright, Carol Mann, Sandra Haynie, and Sandra Palmer helped maintain a reasonable level of popularity for the LPGA throughout the 1960s. Star players who emerged during the subsequent decade embrace Jan Stephenson, Jo-Anne Carner, Amy Alcott, and Judy Rankin. The foremost notable player to emerge during the 70s was Nancy Lopez, who, by winning 9 tournaments (including a record five straight) during her first full season on the tour (1978), was a major force in increasing the recognition and prestige of the LPGA.

Pat Daniel, Betsy King, Patty Sheehan, Juli Inkster, and Laura Davies were among the high players of the Eighties and 90s. By the flip of the century, when the annual purse for LPGA events had increased to more than $37 million per year, the tour was dominated by such players as Karrie Webb, Annika Sorenstam, and Se Ri Pak. Sorenstam created headlines in 2001 by changing into the first feminine golfer to score fifty nine in competition and by changing into only the fourth player in LPGA history (once Whitworth, Wright, and Lopez) to win four consecutive tournaments.