PGA Tour and LPGA Players Compete Together for the First Time Since 1999

It’s been an explosive week in golf. And that’s putting it lightly.

First, the USGA announced a universal rollback of the golf ball. Then, Jon Rahm validated the rumor mill and officially announced his decision to join LIV Golf, just weeks before the Dec. 31 deadline for the PGA Tour and LIV’s Saudi backers to come to an official agreement. Current PGA Tour players reacted appropriately to the widening fracture in their sport. The ripple effect of Rahm’s move will be massive. Just the thought of what comes next is enough to make any golf fan let out an exhausted sigh.

But 32 of the best professionals in the world are doing something this week that might put the same contingent of concerned golf purists momentarily at ease. Two tours (no, not those ones) have come together to recreate an event that should have been brought back from the dead a lot sooner.

This week at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla., PGA Tour players and LPGA Tour players are teaming up in a co-sanctioned mixed-team event for the first time since the JCPenney Classic in 1999.

What used to be the QBE Shootout—an unofficial PGA Tour team event at this time of year in the offseason—is now the Grant Thornton Invitational. Sixteen teams consisting of one PGA Tour player and one LPGA Tour player are competing in a 54-hole event that employs a different format each day. First a scramble, then foursomes and, finally, modified four-ball.

Male and female pros are competing on the same course, in the same groups, with the same $4 million purse at stake. The last time that happened was almost 25 years ago, when John Daly and Laura Davies won the last installation of the JCPenney.

So, how’s the resurgence of the event going so far? Well, Rickie Fowler and Lexi Thompson (who made a hole-in-one today) strutted down the fairways wearing matching hot-pink Cobra golf gear. Tony Finau and Nelly Korda’s team name, “FiNelly,” is so catchy that honorary t-shirts have already been made. Joel Dahmen ran a victory lap around the 14th green on Friday when his partner, world No. 1 Lilia Vu, chipped in for eagle. With one round remaining, Jason Day and Lydia Ko lead by two shots.

On Saturdays, @RickieFowler and @Lexi wear pink 🤩 pic.twitter.com/3W2BqSBhRg
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 9, 2023

“This is what golf is all about. It was almost like being back to a kid again,” Ireland’s Leona Maguire said after Round 1. This week, the European Solheim Cup star is teamed up with the 2009 men’s U.S. Open champion, Lucas Glover. The pair met for the first time on Tuesday. On Friday, they opened the tournament with 10 consecutive team birdies in the scramble format.

While a quick scroll on X, formally known as Twitter, might tell a different story, things are actually going smoothly in Naples.

Sahith Theegala and Rose Zhang, two budding young stars on their respective tours, shared a sense of mutual admiration on Friday after their first taste of competition alongside each other.

“I have so much respect for how the PGA Tour players play. Just being able to see them in person and alongside them, be in the same group and play kind of the same golf course at the same time is just a great honor for me,” Zhang said.

Theegala is happy that he was able to successfully recruit Zhang to be a part of his team. The pair share a fitness trainer in Southern California and Theegala made sure to put his request for Zhang in early. He asked her before she even turned professional. Now, with competition underway, Theegala has an even greater level of respect for Zhang and the deep pool of talent on the LPGA.

“It's just cool to see how they dissect the golf course,” Theegala said. “They're just machines, it's a different game almost. Like I think some of these fairways are very narrow and they're still getting it 270, 275 right down the middle and we're not that much longer than that. Even the approach shots are just so much tighter, the dispersion's tighter. It's cool to see.”

After Saturday’s alternate-shot round, Day even revealed he’s been picking Ko’s brain about how she plays her wedge shots, and he hopes to implement some of her technique into his own game in the off-season.

“I was asking her earlier this week how she plays her wedges and that's definitely something that I'm going to take away and try and work on in the offseason, which is coming up,” Day said. “Seeing if that can transfer over to my game as well, which will help my wedge game.”

Ruoning Yin, the current No. 2 in the world, had similar praise for the PGA Tour players in the field. The 21-year-old, known on the LPGA as “Ronnie,” revealed that this is her first time playing and practicing alongside male pros.

“To be able to see them even just practicing on the range, it's a different feeling…they hit the ball so far, and it just sounds different,” she said.

The mixed-event being mutually beneficial for the players themselves is just an added bonus. Especially when continued in future seasons, the collaboration between the two tours could be the beginning of a new era where the image of PGA Tour and LPGA Tour players walking the same fairways won’t seem so foreign.

The revived event comes two months after Thompson played in the PGA Tour’s Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas. As just the seventh woman to tee it up with the men, Thompon’s entry garnered significant support, especially after she hit multiple 300-yard drives and missed the cut by just two shots.

Grant Thornton has already established a long-term multiple year contract to sponsor the event, but some players are already anticipating more.

“My hope is that it leads to more events where the PGA Tour players and the LPGA players can compete with or against each other,” Canada’s Corey Conners said. “The girls are so impressive.”