The Grant Thornton Invitational is back this week, pairing the best players from the LPGA Tour with players from the PGA Tour for a three-day event in Naples. Here is every team at The Grant Thornton Invitational ranked by likelihood to win:
No. 3 – Nelly Korda and Denny McCarthy – I think this is a good pairing for Nelly Korda, probably better than her partnerships with Tony Finau and Daniel Berger. They paired up at the QBE Shootout a couple years ago and were one of the stories of that week. Now, they come in with Nelly nearly having won on this exact course just a few weeks back and McCarthy in relatively good form since August with no missed cuts and a top-15 finish in that time.
No. 2 – Brooke Henderson and Corey Conners – Outside of Lydia Ko and Jason Day and Lexi Thompson and Wyndham Clark, this is probably the best team on paper. The dangerous thing here, is they should have the potential to be better in practice. No two players in the field have known each other for longer, dating back to their junior days in Canada. Conners also comes into this pretty easily in the best form of any PGA Tour player, with two consecutive top-seven finishes, albeit against limited fields.
No. 1 – Charley Hull and Michael Brennan – Michael Brennan is certainly the player fans probably know the least about from the PGA Tour field, but I think this partnership will work out well for him. A late addition to the field and a rookie with limited experience on Tour, he pairs with Charley Hull, perhaps the LPGA Tour player in the field that has the best recent form and an ace in alternate format events. Brennan does bring something to this team though, despite not a lot of action, he does have a win that came just over a month ago.
