Three years after it was hatched, the Grant Thornton Invitational, where PGA Tour and LPGA Tour players come together to trade putts in a true mixed-team showdown, feels more apropos in a world where women’s sports are inching closer to the same footing as men’s.
What began three years back as a fun feel-good idea now reads like a prelude to where golf may be headed, as a sport long defined by guys’ trips and male-centric traditions slowly sheds its boys’ club past and moves toward greater inclusion and a more egalitarian era. And this week at Tiburón Golf Club in Naples, both players and Grant Thornton executives said the event captures a contemporary version of team golf the sport rarely puts on display.
That future is already taking shape at the highest levels: coed golf will debut as a medal event at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles—a watershed moment for the format and one that mirrors golf’s evolving recreational participation patterns.
According to the National Golf Foundation, female participation recently hit a record high— with women now accounting for 28% of the golf population, a number set to grow considering the female cohort has driven 60% of the sports growth since 2019 and young women are the game’s fastest growing segment.
That wave of new participation has been filtering from the grass roots into the professional ranks, where mixed-team golf is beginning to look less like a social sports experiment and more like a reflection of golf’s new reality.
Players are already feeling the knock-on effect of that momentum inside the ropes. “With it being in the Olympics I think that is a big deal,” six-time PGA Tour winner Tony Finau said, noting how Los Angeles 2028 will give mixed-team golf its biggest spotlight yet, bringing “international appeal” and helping “push the way forward for more events like this.” His partner, two-time major champion Lilia Vu put it more plainly: “what’s better than the crowd seeing their favorite players play on one stage together?”
Vu competed in Paris and while she was part of a U.S. contingent of golfers, she felt the experience was missing a key element. “We had three players from the U.S.A. playing, but it didn’t really feel like a team,” she said. “Bringing that aspect to future Olympics will be really cool.” At Tiburón this week, Vu and Finau said the partnership and collaboration between the two tours is also a draw. “Tony’s personality is going to help me feel more relaxed,” Vu said. “When I’m even keel, that’s when my momentum is the best.”
“I like being a cheerleader. Hopefully I’m watching her making a lot of putts,” Finau said. “I’m not used to cheering for someone in my group but now that I have a partner I want her to hit great shots, and every time she hits it, I’m like ‘hit it in the hole so I don’t have to play,’ he joked.
Those interwoven themes of collaboration, equality and shared ground don’t just resonate with players—they’re central to why Grant Thornton, the official professional services provider of the PGA Tour, has thrown its heft behind this event. CEO Jim Peko sees the mixed-team format not as a novelty, but a harbinger of where both golf and global leadership are headed.
That spirit of collaboration isn’t just happening inside the ropes. Backed by New Mountain Capital, Grant Thornton Advisors has spent the past year building a more unified multinational advisory platform, acquiring 16 Grant Thornton–branded firms including Ireland, the Netherlands and the UAE. Grant Thornton isn’t trying to acquire every GT network office worldwide. It is targeting major business hubs where many of their clients already operate and where integrated leadership makes cross-border service far more seamless.
Peko said the shift to an umbrella structure, rather than a network of independent offices, has given the firm far more agility and alignment in serving multinational clients. That emphasis on alignment is also why Peko sees a clear connection between the mixed-team format of the Invitational and the culture he is trying to build inside the firm.
“We have to celebrate one another for our differences. We feed off those different strengths and use them to offset weaknesses, because nobody is perfect,” he said. “And we see that when somebody has a bad shot and their teammate picks them up,” a hallmark of alternate shot play. For Peko, that balance and complementary skill sets are exactly what Grant Thornton hopes to champion as both golf and the company he heads continue to evolve.
If the action in Naples offers a clue, the future of golf may belong not to the separate tours that defined its past, but to the shared stages where players and organizations learn to win together.
