Rose Zhang and Sahith Theegala team up for the Grant Thornton Invitational

The Grant Thornton Invitational will be a mixed team tournament that will be played next December. Rose Zhang and Sahith Theegala, two players who could be dominating the future of world golf, have teamed up to compete in the inaugural edition of the tournament.

Zhang and Theegala were announced Thursday as one of the teams competing in the Grant Thornton Invitational. A fourth of the 16 teams that will be competing for the prize were made official. The other three duos are Canadians Brooke Henderson and Corey Conners, as well as Americans Nelly Korda/Tony Finau and Jessica Korda/Rickie Fowler. In the case of the elder Korda, it has not been specified if she still intends to compete in this event, since she recently announced that she is expecting her first baby.

The Grant Thornton Invitational will be played at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida (6,552 yards, par 72) and will have a purse of $4,000,000. It is another effort to generalize the tournaments that group male and female professionals, in order to increase the popularity of the game.

The field for the Grant Thornton Invitational will be comprised of 16 mixed teams made up of only LPGA Tour and PGA Tour players. The event will take place December 8-10 and will be played over 54 holes.

Other mixed tournaments currently being played are the Scandinavian Open, where men and women play singles from different tees. The Arnold Palmer Cup, the Junior Ryder Cup and other junior tournaments are also mixed.

Rose Zhang and Sahith Theegala to the Grant Thornton Invitational

The members of the most recent team to the Grant Thornton Invitational, Rose Zhang and Sahith Theegala, have not played together before. They had very little junior experience together and did not attend the same universities.

But they do have experience in team and mixed tournaments. Sahith Theegala, a pro since 2020, played in the 2018 Arnold Palmer Cup, where he was a champion with the American team. There, Theegala contributed 1.5 points out of a possible four to his team.

Rose Zhang, on the other hand, has even more experience in team competitions. At the age of 15 she played in the Junior Ryder Cup, where she was champion with the American team. There, she played in a duo with three female golfers, including current LPGA Tour star Jennifer Suh.

Zhang was then called up to the 2020 Curtis Cup. There she also won as part of a team that included, among others, Allisen Corpuz and Rachel Kuehn.

The following year, Zhang played in the 2022 Arnold Palmer Cup, where the American team was defeated. Rose shared a team there with current rising juniors such as Kuehn herself, Gordon Sargent and Michael Thorbjornsen.

Both Zhang and Theegala have also gained team tournament experience both as juniors and in their respective collegiate golf careers. There is no doubt that they have the resources to take on the Grant Thornton Invitational together.