Lexi Thompson impresses in team with Tony Finau at QBE Shootout

Lexi Thompson was given another chance to test herself in the men’s game as she teamed up with Tony Finau on the PGA Tour at the QBE Shootout.

The American was a sponsor's invite for the second time in as many years at the 24-player event in Florida, with the 22-year-old one of just a handful of women to have ever appeared on the PGA Tour.

The LPGA Tour's Race to the CME Globe champion appeared alongside Finau in the team tournament hosted by Greg Norman's foundation, where each of the three rounds is played under a different format.

After posting a combined nine-under 63 in Friday's scramble format, the team posted back-to-back 66s in alternative formats over the weekend to finish in a share of fourth spot.

"It was a lot of fun," Thompson said. "It definitely tested my game and I'm not used to hitting those long-irons in, and it's mentally tough as well."

Golf Review of the Year

Following Thompson's strong showing in the end-of-season event, we take a look back at how women have previously fared when competing against men…

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Six years after winning two track and field gold medals in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and long before becoming a World Golf Hall of Famer, the future 10-time women's major champion appeared as an amateur in an all-male tournament.

Zaharias was deemed a professional by the USGA so couldn't play in ladies amateur events, instead featuring in a number of male competitions before making her first PGA Tour start at the 1938 Los Angeles Open.

Playing in the same group as future husband George Zaharias, she posted rounds of 84 and 81 to miss the cut and made a third-round exit from the competition seven years later.

Annika Sorenstam

Fifty-eight years on from Zaharias' last PGA Tour start, LPGA legend Sorenstam caused a mixed reaction from the golfing world by accepting a sponsor's invitation to play at the 2003 Bank of America Colonial.

Vijay Singh was among the players to publically criticise her appearance, suggesting that she "didn't belong in the men's game", with Nick Price and Scott Hoch among the others to question her place in the field.

Sorenstam suffered an early exit after rounds of 71 and 74 but impressed in a Skins Game later that year, where she beat Mark O'Meara and Phil Thompson and only narrowly lost out to Fred Couples.

She then teamed up with Couples at the 2006 Merrill Lynch Shootout, where they finished bottom of the 12-team leaderboard and 13 strokes back from winners Jerry Kelly and Rod Pampling.

Michelle Wie

Eight appearances on the PGA Tour as a teenager all ended in missed cuts for Wie, although the-then 14-year-old did card a second-round 68 at the 2004 Sony Open to get within one stroke of progressing.

Wie made her first male appearances aged 13 on the Canadian Tour and Nationwide Tour, with the only professional men's cut she made coming from a tied-35th finish on the Asian Tour at the 2006 SK Telecom Open.

As well as trying, unsuccessfully, to qualify for the 2006 US Open, Wie was also given a sponsor's invite later that year for the European Tour's European Masters where she missed the cut.

Best of the rest

Winning the 2002 Connecticut PGA Championship secured Suzy Whaley a place in the following year's Greater Hartford Open, where the course was nearly 700 yards longer than the one she had qualified on.

Whaley only lasted two rounds before suffering an early exit, with scores of 75 and 78 seeing her miss the cut by some 13 strokes.

Dame Laura Davies missed the cut when playing alongside men on the Asian Tour at the 2003 Korean Open, although will get another chance to impress against the opposite next summer when she features on the European Senior Tour at the 2018 Shipco Masters.

A few weeks later, Si Re Pak became the first woman in 58 years since 1945 to make the cut in a men's professional event when she carded rounds of 72 and 74 at the SBS Super Tournament.