Dianne Dailey

By Susan R. Wente
Feb. 15, 2024

Today we honor a beloved coach and mentor who inspired personal and athletic success in students and whose passion for excellence transformed Wake Forest women’s golf into a national powerhouse. During her stellar 30-year coaching career at Wake Forest, women’s golf earned 30 team titles, 38 individual titles, four ACC titles and 15 appearances in the NCAA championships. Her positive mentorship, contagious enthusiasm and extraordinary talent for instilling confidence have forged connections with many student athletes that endure beyond graduation. I am pleased to recognize Dianne Dailey as a 2024 Medallion of Merit recipient.

Ms. Dailey’s impact on women’s golf began as a teenager in Frankfort, Kentucky, when she started her high school girls golf team and led them to a state championship where she was named individual winner. She received a bachelor’s degree from Salem College in Winston-Salem and a master’s degree from North Carolina State University. She was assistant academic dean at Salem College when she qualified for the LPGA Tour at age 30. She played professionally for 10 years and served as LPGA vice president and president while on the Tour.

In 1988, Ms. Dailey was named Wake Forest’s head coach of women’s golf and director of women’s athletics. She relinquished her administrative role in 1999 to focus on building a championship women’s golf program that launched the careers of numerous pro golfers. She retired in 2018.

Ms. Dailey has been widely heralded for her coaching acumen, and her gift for developing players continues to impact women’s golf through the professional success of her students. She was named ACC Coach of the Year four times while taking her team to an NCAA regional berth every year from 1993 to 2018. In 2001, she was selected LPGA Coach of the Year and inducted into the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame. She also served as NGCA’s president. In 2021, she was inducted into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame. In tribute to her talents as an instructor, Wake Forest named the state-of-the-art Dianne Dailey Golf Learning Center in her honor.

Ms. Dailey’s Pro Humanitate commitment to cultivating the strengths of her student athletes is evident in the accolades they earned. In three decades of coaching at Wake Forest, Ms. Dailey developed 27 All-Americans, 39 All-ACC selections, five ACC Players of the Year and four ACC Freshmen of the Year, including the 2018 NCAA champion and inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion Jennifer Kupcho. Although Ms. Dailey retired from Wake Forest six years ago, she continues to coach golf – sharing her gift for the game with high schoolers, beginners and amateurs.

In gratitude for 30 years dedicated to building Wake Forest women’s golf into a top-tier national program, for her instrumental role in promoting women’s golf through professional leadership in the LPGA and NGCA, and for serving as an encouraging and inspirational mentor to student athletes, Wake Forest University confers its highest honor, the Medallion of Merit, upon Dianne Dailey on this fifteenth day of February, two thousand twenty-four.