When you think of Virginia Tech Athletics, the Men's Golf program will not be the first sport that comes to mind. However, the Hokies do have some pretty good 21st Century history with their Men's Golf program.
There was a time when VT was one of the stronger ACC programs and producing some serious golfing talent including three-time PGA Tour winner Johnson Wagner, three-time PGA Tour runner-up Brendon de Jonge, current PGA Tour member Trevor Cone, and former LIV golfer Scott Vincent. This is a program that even produced a winner of the prestigious British Amateur in Drew Weaver who also was part of the 2009 Walker Cup for the US.
However, this program has been in a slow state of decay and decline since the teams led by Vincent and Cone during the mid-2010s, with the program now the worst by far among the power conference schools that offer men's golf, and is among the bottom half of all Division I programs.
This past season, Virginia Tech finished 187th out of 308 programs in the Scoreboard rankings that are sponsored by TaylorMade. Some of the programs that finished ahead of Virginia Tech include Idaho (170), South Dakota (172), St Thomas (MN) (180), and UMKC (182). Among in-state programs, VT comes well behind plenty of others including UVA (9), Liberty (90), Richmond (118), JMU (136), Longwood (161), VCU (165), and George Mason (166) with William & Mary coming in only one spot behind VT at 188th.
Virginia Tech's highest ranked golfer in Scoreboard's individual rankings came in at 595th. For comparison, Virginia had six golfers ranked higher than that while Liberty had four, and Richmond and JMU had two each.
In regular season tournaments, Virginia Tech finished dead last four times while only having two top 10 finishes in what are roughly 14-18 team fields including only one top five finish against a very weak field. The Hokies also finished last in the ACC Championships and didn't even have an individual qualify for NCAAs this year.
Those are horrid numbers but you may be thinking that this is a one year dud since there wasn't a coaching change after a year this bad. However, this has been a trend for a while for Virginia Tech, with the Hokies' Men's Golf program being the worst in the ACC for years.
Since Brian Sharp took over in January 2019, Virginia Tech best ACC finish was ninth during the 2019 ACCs. That was out of 12 teams with VT finishing 10th in 2021 and 2022 before suffering three last place finishes of 12th twice and 15th this season in an expanded league. Over their three last place finishes the past three years, the closest they were to not finishing last was by five strokes this past year.
During Sharp's tenure, the Hokies have only won one tournament in the 2021 Oldfield Tournament (which featured only eight teams with Cincinnati being the only other power conference school). They've also only reached the NCAAs as a team once back in 2021 with the Hokies not even having an individual qualifier in 2019, 2023, and 2025.
Sharp was an assistant for a lot of VT's past golfing success, but his tenure as head coach clearly has gone the wrong way with no signs of a turnaround anytime soon.
This is despite the fact that the Hokies have good facilities with the Pete Dye River Course being ranked regularly among the top 10 collegiate golf courses in America. While some golf programs certainly have some NIL resources, you can't make a NIL excuse when your program ranks 187th in the country.
That's the type of performance that should be horrifying and force a complete reset of the program. Even with Whit Babcock being on as warm of a seat as he's on, that isn't enough to have him be limited from making a change should he and VT want to.
And yet, despite all of these realities, Virginia Tech seems content to let this Men's Golf program continue on without any change whatsoever or any concern about the decay of this program.
Yes, Men's Golf may understandably be among the lowest priorities, but this is a program that has developed quality talent and had lots of success in the past. This isn't like a Duke Wrestling program that receives no scholarship support and is basically a club program competing in the ACC.
However, Virginia Tech seems content for now to allow this once-proud program to be the ACC's doormat despite having the potential to be significantly better with the right leadership.
