The 2026 season is over for Tennessee golf, and both programs leave Carlsbad with something to show for it. The men's team matched the second-best finish in program history before losing out in a gut-punch four-team playoff for the final two match play spots. The Lady Vols, who made the trip to the NCAAs for the second consecutive year, did so as the first SEC Champions in program history — a title they earned in April and one that defines what this program has become under its current staff. Neither team is still playing. Both had seasons worth remembering.
Men's Golf: Third Straight NCAAs, Heartbreak in the Playoff
Bryan Regional: A Comeback Nobody Saw Coming
Tennessee entered the Bryan Regional at Traditions Club in Bryan, Texas, as the 16th-ranked team in the country and left it having secured an NCAA Championship berth for the third year in a row — but the path to Carlsbad was anything but clean. With Tennessee sitting nearly 10 strokes outside the top five in the second round and early into the third, the season appeared to be ending in Texas. Then seniors Josh Hill and Lance Simpson refused to let it. Hill shot four-under in the third round, posting Tennessee's best individual 54-hole score in an NCAA Regional in program history. Simpson contributed five-under in the same round. The back nine of day three turned an early exit into a fifth-place regional finish at 18-under, five strokes clear of TCU in sixth. The Vols were going back to Carlsbad.
NCAA Championships: All the Way to the Playoff
The 2026 NCAA Division I Men's Golf Championship was held May 29 through June 3 at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa's Champions Course in Carlsbad, California. Thirty teams competed in four rounds of stroke play, with the top 15 advancing to match play. Tennessee arrived as the 18th seed, led by sophomore Jackson Herrington — who had played the 2026 Masters as the low amateur just two months earlier — and backed by a roster that had been to this stage twice before.
The Vols survived the first cut after an opening round that left them right on the bubble, then made a five-stroke improvement in the second round to stay in contention heading into the final two days. The fourth and final round of stroke play was Tennessee's best of the week: a four-under 284 that moved the team to two under overall and into a tie for seventh on the stroke play leaderboard. The top 15 advanced automatically. Tennessee was one of four teams tied just outside that threshold at two under, and those four teams — Tennessee, North Carolina, UCLA, and Stanford — went to a sudden-death playoff for the two remaining spots.
In the playoff, each team's five players played one hole simultaneously with aggregate scores determining who moved on. Stanford posted even par. UCLA shot one over. Tennessee and North Carolina both came in at two over and were eliminated. The season was over. Tennessee finished tied for seventh — the same position the program reached in 1981, and just one spot below the program's all-time best finish of sixth in 1980. It is not the ending the Vols wanted, but it is one of the best results in the program's history.
Herrington's Season in Full
Jackson Herrington's 2026 season deserves its own paragraph. The Knoxville native and Tennessee sophomore played the Masters Tournament in April as the reigning low amateur — a moment that put his name in front of the entire golf world — and arrived at the NCAAs as one of the most recognized college golfers in the country. He closed the stroke play portion of the championship tied for 46th at three over, with a final-round 73. It was not his best week, but it came at the end of a season that included one of the most high-profile amateur appearances in recent memory. Herrington is a name that Tennessee golf fans will be following for a long time.
Lady Vols: A Season That Made History
The SEC Title That Changed Everything
Before any conversation about the NCAAs, the defining moment of the Lady Vols' 2026 season came in April. Tennessee's women's golf team had never won the SEC Championship. Not once in the program's history. On April 21, 2026, that changed. Seeded sixth heading into match play at the conference tournament, the Lady Vols defeated Oklahoma 4-1 in the first round and Texas A&M 3-2 in the semifinals before facing Auburn in the final. Tennessee won that match 3-2. Kyra Van Kan, Sophie Christopher, and Sofie Engesaeth each won their individual matches. Van Kan drained the clinching putt to win her match 2&1, and Tennessee women's golf had its first SEC Championship in program history. It was the program's fourth tournament win of the season — a new program record — and a result that head coach Jodi Kearney's staff had been building toward for years.
The individual honors kept coming after the title. Madison Messimer was named SEC Freshman of the Year, and both Messimer and Van Kan earned All-SEC recognition — two players on a team that was still learning how to be champions.
Waco Regional: Another Comeback
The path to the NCAAs the previous month had required a comeback of its own. At the Waco Regional, the Lady Vols entered the back nine of the third round sitting outside the top five — the cutoff for automatic advancement — and looking at the end of their season. They played the final nine holes at six under par, completed a seven-stroke comeback, and then won the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to punch their ticket to Carlsbad. It was the kind of moment that defines a program still learning how to grind.
NCAA Championships: The Run Ends in Stroke Play
At the NCAA Championships — held May 22-27 at the same Omni La Costa venue that hosted the men — the Lady Vols arrived as the 18th seed riding the momentum of the program's best season. They competed through the stroke play rounds and stayed in contention through two days, sitting in a tie for 15th at 10 over through 36 holes — right at the cut line to advance to round four. They ultimately did not make the top eight needed for match play, and their season ended in stroke play. Stanford won the women's national championship. Tennessee came home knowing the program has never been closer to competing at that level.
Final Thoughts
Tennessee golf in 2026 looked like a program moving in the right direction on both sides. The men matched the second-best NCAA Championship finish in program history on the strength of a roster that made three straight national championships and a roster that includes a Masters participant in Jackson Herrington. The women won the SEC for the first time in program history, produced an SEC Freshman of the Year, and made the NCAAs for the second consecutive season. Neither program won a national championship. Both gave their fans every reason to come back and watch next year.