GAINESVILLE, Va. – If it wasn’t a party before, with the DJ and ear-aching music blaring throughout Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, it was when Alison Lee holed out in Saturday afternoon’s fourballs.
Lee spun in a wedge from 86 yards on the par-4 second for eagle. In response, Lee’s caddie, Taylor “Shota” Takada, and partner Megan Khang’s caddie, Jack Fulghum, took off their shirts, gave bro hugs and ran wild.
There was a backstory to the celebration, which Lee explained after the match:
“Right after the first hole, [Fulghum] kind of looked at us and said, ‘Come on, guys, I want to see one of you guys hole out. I want to see a really good shot.’ He said that if one of us holes out we’ll get $500, and I said, I don’t want your money. I don’t need $500. How about you take your shirt off, and he’s like, yeah, I’ll do it, and he looked over at my caddie, Shota, and he’s like, you’re going to do it, and they agreed, and it’s crazy it happened five minutes later.”
“Jack was the first person to take his shirt off,” Lee continued. “He was so quick with it and I saw it from the corner of my eye. I looked at my caddie, Shota, I was like, why aren’t you taking your shirt off? Take it off. He finally took it off. It was a really cool moment.”
Khang did all she could to not douse her teammate with the bottle of water in her hand. U.S. captain Stacy Lewis, surrounded by vice captains and players on the first tee, was able to see the intense celebration on a giant monitor.
She caught up with Lee and Khang later in the round.
“Yeah, they thought they were in trouble when I came up on 7,” Lewis said, “and I just told them that they were going viral. That was all I was coming to tell them.”
The shot won the hole for the U.S. side to put them 1 up over Europe’s Anna Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom. They went on to prevail, 4 and 3.
Asked about the shirtless antics, European captain Suzann Pettersen joked, “I would just say, sex sells. Go for it.”