Starting at the age of four, Delon was drawn to the sport of golf for its ability to refuse perfection even to its most accomplished participants. “You are so frustrated all the time,” Delon said. “But it’s also when you hit a good shot, you are so happy. If you win a tournament, you’re so happy. Even if you win, you have something to improve.”
Delon’s career before Virginia Tech was everything except smooth. Over a decade after she first picked up a club, Delon would undergo back surgery in 2019 at the age of 15, sidelining her for a year when her game was starting to truly click. Combine this with the COVID-19 pandemic and the French transfer wouldn’t see the green for extended amounts of time.
“It was almost two years without competing,” Delon said. “It was really hard.”
Delon described the back surgery as the hardest moment of her life. As she was surrounded by family, a long line of French golf coaches and her closest friends, however, the experience turned into something far more profound than she could have ever imagined.
“I was surrounded by really, really good people. I had good coaches in France, [and] they help me to see that everything was possible [after the surgery]. The people around me in France are so amazing that every day I want to put the French flag on top of the leaderboard.”
Since her back surgery in 2019, Delon has had little trouble doing just that. The French golfer soared to a title win in the 2024 French Ladies Championship, winning five straight matches en route to the tournament title. In the 36-hole final, the golfer posted 12 birdies – including seven on the first 18.
“That was really, really nice for me,” Delon said. “Representing my country is so important to me. Doing it in front of my family was just amazing.”
Perhaps one of the most impressive milestones in Delon’s already storied career came earlier this month. In the Advanced Golf Partners Collegiate at Hammond Creek Golf Club in Palm City, Florida, Delon and the Hokies blitzed through the competition, earning the outright victory over 17 other Division I women’s golf teams. It was the third time Virginia Tech Women’s Golf has won a title and the second time the title was claimed outright by the Hokies.
101 golfers competed in the competition. Delon stood alone at the top.
Delon’s first-round –7 was the best any golfer shot in any of the three rounds in the competition. When asked if she had any nerves after tying the Virginia Tech record for one-round performance, Delon mentioned how she was surprisingly cognizant of how her lead could disappear in an instant.
“Somebody told me on the phone that, in golf, two days follow each other, but they are so different,” Delon said. [I told myself] that maybe your best round is going to be a plus one or maybe going to be a minus five, but I’m going to do the best I can with tomorrow.”
And the best she did. After a –2 performance in the second and a +1 performance in the third rounds, Delon would finish 1st of 101 golfers with an astounding –8.
Delon mentioned how she knew she was leading and had relative knowledge of the school records after her first-round performance. Entering the second and third rounds, Delon said much of her focus was not on the physical – it was on her mental.
“What’s happening in your head is probably 60% of your golf game,” Delon said. “Honestly, I was more proud of [my ability to stay calm], even if I did some bogeying and double bogeying, than winning.”
While her record-setting rounds were played individually, Delon credits so much of her in-game performance to her team. The culture at Virginia Tech was one of the main reasons the French transfer considered coming to Blacksburg.
“Coming from France is different, but we all learn each other,” Delon said. “Being a team is never easy. It's sometimes hard but I think [our] little team [of] six, even sometimes [when] we do [make a] mistake, we just try to do better and to help each other a little bit more every day.”
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