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There Was an Ace on LIV’s Party Hole, and the Crowd Went Absolutely Wild

Chase Koepka made a hole in one, and Australian fans erupted into pandemonium.

Gabrielle Herzig

There Was an Ace on LIV’s Party Hole, and the Crowd Went Absolutely Wild
There Was an Ace on LIV’s Party Hole, and the Crowd Went Absolutely Wild /

All week, the excitement was building around the 12th hole at LIV’s Adelaide event, which the Saudi-backed league playfully coined the “Watering Hole.” With an enclosed seating structure and nonstop music, the par-3 shared quite a few similarities with the WM Phoenix Open’s famous 16th-hole Coliseum. 

Cans were thrown, and beers were chugged throughout the three-day tournament, but no LIV golf member was able to get the crowd into full celebration mode—until Chase Koepka on Sunday afternoon. 

Koepka, Brooks Koepka’s younger brother, stepped up to the tee and hit a 9-iron with a slight draw. Staring down the 165-yard shot, Koepka watched as his ball landed just a few yards to the right of the pin. 

It took one soft bounce and then trickled perfectly into the center of the cup for an ace. It was his sixth hole in one. 

The crowd immediately erupted into the loudest roar of the tournament and launched countless drinks, cups, cans and bottles onto the tee box, soaking Koepka and his pairing. 

“I kind of thought if anything it was going to be a little deep, and I saw it kind of pitch in the up slope and take a soft bounce, and I was like, ‘oh, it’ll be close,’ and then the roars just kept getting louder and louder and louder, and when it went in, I started just getting peppered with beer cans.

“I smelled like beer the whole entire rest of the day. Yeah, it was wild. Crazy experience. I mean, obviously to do it on a hole like that was super special. It definitely gave the fans something to remember,” Koepka said.

Another angle of the ace shows just how chaotic the celebration was. 

“The next couple hours I was out there, I was just getting ovation after ovation every time I walked up to every shot, every tee box. It was pretty cool. That’s probably what Cam Smith felt like the entire week, but at least I got a glimpse of it,” Koepka said. 

Koepka finished in a tie for 23rd at the Australia event, shooting a tournament total of 10-under after his final-round 66. 

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Gabrielle Herzig
GABRIELLE HERZIG

Gabrielle Herzig is a Breaking and Trending News writer for Sports Illustrated Golf. Previously, she worked as a Golf Digest Contributing Editor, an NBC Sports Digital Editorial Intern, and a Production Runner for FOX Sports at the site of the 2018 U.S. Open. Gabrielle graduated as a Politics Major from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she was a four-year member and senior-year captain of the Pomona-Pitzer women’s golf team. In her junior year, Gabrielle studied abroad in Scotland for three months, where she explored the Home of Golf by joining the Edinburgh University Golf Club.

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