Westlake High School’s boys golf team is in the midst of a dynastic run. The Chaps have won 8 of the last 9 6A state championships and have now claimed 15 state titles in their history, more than any other sport at the successful school. After the Chaps’ 2026 championship, we sat down with longtime golf coach and current Westlake athletic director Callan Nokes, who delivered 9 state titles in his tenure, to unravel the secret to the Chaps’ success. The answer, you might expect, isn’t one small thing. In order to go fully behind the red-and-blue curtain, we’ll take a deep dive into the pillars of success one at a time with a multi-part series on Westlake’s unrivaled 6A success.
Westlake High School is known for its football success – the Chaps won 3 straight 6A titles from 2019-21 – but the school’s most successful program by a wide margin is the boys’ golf program, which just won the school’s 15th state title. That includes 8 of the last 9 6A titles.
“I think it’s really cool that we have the most state championships at Westlake,” said Reid Davenport, a Westlake state champion in 2017 and 2018. “I hope people understand how much work it takes to do that.”
Westlake’s most recent championship came in April, when the Chaps won the title by 6 strokes over The Woodlands. Henry Talarico, completing his sophomore season, won the individual title, and a pair of teammates – University of Texas-bound Sterling Hurd and sophomore JP Lynch – tied for 3rd individually.
The title marks the school’s second straight under coach Michael Rome, a former Westlake state championship player and assistant coach who succeeded now-athletic director Callan Nokes as the head coach. Nokes coached the Chaps from 2003 through 2023, winning 9 titles along the way.
“To win a state title takes a lot of work,” Davenport said. “It doesn’t matter how good you are … you still have to show up and do it. You can’t fall asleep on the little things. The coaches obviously do a good job of keeping the guys’ heads down instead of looking at the finish line.”
Nokes, the 2-time state coach of the year and 2021 national golf coach of the year, began implementing his blueprint shortly after taking over, and after a few building years, things took off. He won his first 2 state titles in 2009 and 2010 but then didn’t win again until 2014. Another 2-year mini-drought followed (the Chaps finished 2nd in 2015 and 3rd in 2016) before the floodgates opened with the 2017 title.
That begs the question: What makes Westlake’s program different?
“It’s just old-fashioned work ethic,” Nokes said.
Okay, maybe there’s more to it than that.
“It’s our attention to detail and all of the little things,” Rome said. “If you line up Westlake, Lake Travis and Vandegrift players on a driving range, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. All of them can play. How we go about our practice and how we prepare for tournaments, we’re trying to separate ourselves from everyone else. What can we do better to get the ball in the hole a little bit faster than everyone else?”
Nokes and Rome spoke about the Chaps’ long-established formula for success, which – perhaps shockingly – more teams have yet to emulate despite Nokes being open about most of his strategies while speaking at coaching conventions through the years. Adam Villanueva, a 2-time Westlake state champion and current Texas Longhorn, recalls chatting with rivals from San Antonio Johnson and Houston Memorial about their programs.
“Our qualifying and our chemistry are like nothing else,” Villaneuva said about Westlake’s approach. “I ask my buddies at other schools (about their programs), and they’ll tell me they don’t really practice a lot and they don’t work out. Those 2 things are almost religious for us. We go at it every Tuesday and Thursday morning, getting our bodies in good condition, and then we start qualifying. And it’s not just one guy. It’s our entire team. No one is just going through the motions.”
From his early days at the helm, Nokes – a former basketball player and football coach who didn’t pick up golf until after college – insisted his golfers hit the weight room as often as the football team did.
“One thing we do better than anybody else is the way I train(ed) them in the weight room with our strength and conditioning coach,” Nokes said shortly after the 2026 team brought back the school’s latest hardware.
“We lift twice a week - hard,” Nokes said. “I’ve told the strength coach that I want him to (make these guys lift harder than he makes the football team lift). And they do.”
The results are hard to argue with.
“Year after year, and it just happened again when I was out there watching, we go to the par 5s. Everybody pulls out driver because they want to get there in 2, and our guys are always at least 20 yards, if not 30, past everybody else in the group.”
And lest you think Talarico, Hurd, and Lynch simply possess unique Rory McIlroy-esque length, they are not anomalies wearing Chap colors.
“This has been a repeating theme for 15 years because of the fitness program that we started 18 years ago,” Nokes said.
Nokes continually drove that theme home to his players, and when the biggest tournaments came, they were comfortable pulling out drivers to attack the longer holes.
“I would tell them that we’re going to be stronger than everyone else, we’re going to hit it further than anyone else, and we’re going to play an easier golf course than everyone else is playing,” Nokes explained.
The consistent work in the weight room, paired with focused practice on the Barton Creek Club’s practice facility, enabled Westlake’s players to rely on already-solid swings so they didn’t feel the need to muscle up in the moment to deliver longer shots.
“We’re always going to keep our technique solid with our swings, so we can find it (hitting fairways),” Nokes said. “But we’re going to hit it longer, and we’re going to have wedges into the par 4s, where other teams are hitting 8 or 7 irons. And everyone knows it’s easier to hit wedge straight than it is an 8 or a 7. So, that’s been a huge part.”
Grant Feldman, a 2022 graduate who went on to play golf at Creighton, where he became an All-Big East performer during a career in which he tied or broke 8 different school records, said Westlake’s program takes a collegiate approach to high school golf.
“Now that I’ve played college golf, you can see that Westlake is run very much like a college team,” Feldman said. “You lift, you compete and qualify all the time, you learn from the guys who are older.”
Villanueva agreed.
“When I was (at Westlake), I defined the program as one big family and group of really good players,” he said. “It’s very similar to a college program. After a year at Texas, I had the same feeling I had when I was a 9th grader going into 10th grade. I was kind of the new kid, and I wanted to see how the qualifiers would go.”
Jacob Sosa, who just wrapped up a college career that included 2 years at Texas and 2 years at Texas A&M, says Westlake’s success goes beyond the lifting sessions, the tournament prep, and even the play itself.
“Everything that Coach Nokes and (assistant) Coach (Lane) Grigg did was done to reward success,” Sosa said. “I think that’s huge. There was always something better when we did good things, never anything to punish us when we didn’t play well.”
Part 2 (Monday, 7/13): Practicing Competitive Golf, not ‘Golf Swing’
Part 3 (Tuesday, 7/14): Creating Program Depth through Frequent Team Qualifying Chances
Part 4 (Wednesday, 7/15): Embracing the Expectations and the Chaps who Delivered when it Mattered Most
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