☛ Library of Congress (Print & Photographs Online Catalog): “Golf in bathing suits” author unknown, b&w film copy negative, July 9, 1926. Call Number: LC-F8- 40216. No known restrictions on publication.

There are actually two different entries at the LoC for this picture: the version reproduced above and a slightly overexposed version titled “Icing off at the tee” (Call Number: LOT 12342-5). The description comes from the later:

Miss Dorothy Kelly teeing off on a cake of ice. The others in the group are Misses Virginia Hunter, Elaine Griggs, Hazel Brown, and Mary Kaminsky, Washington, D.C. area.

Those five girls were performers (dancers and musicians) known as the Gladyse Wilbur girls. I got that from a comment left at Shorpy’s website. I’m guessing the photograph along with others taken the same day (see below) were intended as promotional material. Indeed, other Washington Post’s articles from the same period refers to a show the girls were doing all week at the B.F. Keith’s theater, in Washington, with entertainers Ruth and Dick Gilbert :

It is not a long jump to the back side of the footlights for song writers who have made good at broadcasting and record making. Such is the case of Ruth and Dick Gilbert, who will appear at the B.F. Keith’s theater all the week of July 11, with the Gladyse Wilbur girls, six dainty maidens, who render a surprise ukelele chorus. (Washington Post: “A New Act to Make Bow at Keith’s”, July 11, 1926, page F3)

The next day, a review was somehow less enthusiastic:

Ruth and Dick Gilbert, known heretofore as Gilbert and Wimp, present a little song and dance number, assisted by the Gladyse Wilbur girls―which girls would have aided things in a finer way if they concerned themselves less with dancing. The Gilbert duo present the harmonious numbers in their usual way. (The Washington Post: “Keith’s”, July 12, 1926, page 7).

Below are more shots of the Gladyse Wilbur girls taken the same day (call numbers with permanent links in order of appearance: LC-F8- 40215, LC-F8- 40213 and LC-F8- 40212):

First spotted via Shorpy