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VIRGINIA
GOLFER
A R O U N D
T H E
COMMON
WEALTH
compiled by CHRIS LANG
VICTORIA TIP-AUCHA,
WINNER OF THE 47TH
VSGA JUNIOR GIRLS'
CHAMPIONSHIP.
» Virginia golf & the folks who make it great
N EWS & NOTES: 7 CHAMPION: JOEY LANE 9 VSGA SUMMER CHAMPIONSHIPS RECAP 12 THE RULES
Lane Next In Line?
Dominating wins at the 103rd VSGA Amateur and Eastern
Amateur have Joey Lane thinking big
CHRIS LANG
ASK JAY HARDWICK WHO
JOEY LANE reminds him of, and the
first name that comes from the longtime
Virginia Tech coach’s mouth is Johnson
Wagner, the former Hokie standout and
winner of three PGA Tour events.
For one, both players walked on to Tech’s
roster with no promise of scholarship
money in the future. The only thing Hardwick could help Wagner with, financially,
was paying for his books. The only thing
Hardwick could promise Lane, who attended Flint Hill School in Oakton, was a spot on
vsga.org
the roster with the opportunity to play his
way into a scholarship.
There are other similarities. Both were
late bloomers, at least in terms of securing
important victories. Wagner didn’t win a
tournament in college until taking the title
at the 2002 Big East Conference Championship. Lane, now a senior at Tech, hasn’t
won a collegiate event, but he picked up the
biggest win of his career on July 2 when he
completed a dominating run through the
103rd VSGA Amateur Championship at the
Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech by
beating three-time finalist Ji Soo Park 8 and
6 in the championship match.
A week later, Lane continued his hot play,
opening with a 65 and closing with the same
score at Elizabeth Manor Golf & Country
Club in Portsmouth for a four-stroke win at
the Eastern Amateur, a 156-player strokeplay championship featuring many of the
nation’s top college players.
“People will say he won the (VSGA) Amateur on a golf course that he plays a lot,”
Hardwick said. “But he turned around and
validated it pretty quickly.”
Before those two wins on back-to-back
weeks, Lane hadn't won since taking the
2012 Optimist International Junior Championship, an event with an impressive list of
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