The Ladies European Tour is the professional women’s golf tour of Europe. Often known simply as the LET, it organises the women’s European golf calendar with upwards of 30 events held each year.
Although it is predominantly a European tour, it also includes events in the United States, Australia, and in countries across Asia and Africa, bringing together top players from around the world.
The LET organises the Solheim Cup when the event is held on European soil, and its majors are the Women’s British Open and the Evian Championship – it does not recognise the 3 major tournaments held in the United States, although its biggest stars will invariably compete in those events.
📜 Ladies European Tour History
The LET was founded in 1978 – professional women’s golf was slower to take hold in Europe than in the United States, where the LPGA Tour had been founded in 1950 – when the Women's Professional Golfers' Association (WPGA) branch formed as part of the Professional Golfers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Tour itself began the following year with a schedule comprised of 12 36-hole events plus several other tournaments including the Women’s British Open. However, the schedule was reduced to just 10 events by 1982 amid some early struggles, and in 1988 Tour members broke away to form an independent company, Women Professional Golfers' European Tour.
The company changed its name 10 years later to European Ladies' Professional Golf Association, before settling on the Ladies European Tour name in 2000. It has grown slowly and steadily in the decades since; it has particularly expanded in terms of events and prize money in recent years following partnerships with the LPGA Tour and DP World Tour.
💯 Ladies European Tour Format & Scoring
The LET season typically runs from February to December and offers a combined prize money total of more than €35 million. In addition to prize money, players competing on the Tour also earn Race to the Costa del Sol points.
The season concludes with the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open de España. The player with the most points at the end of the season is crowned the LET’s Number One, who shares a €250,000 bonus pool with the players who finish 2nd and 3rd.
Most events are held in the stroke play format, whereby the player with the lowest number of strokes across the tournament is the winner.
