Cancer blindsided him. Now, 9 months later, Brendan Valdes gets his new start

A new year is supposed to begin with hope for what’s to come. It’s a new start. A clean slate.

On January 1, Brendan Valdes didn’t feel well and decided he should go to an emergency room in Orlando. He thought he had, in his words, a “regular ole sickness.”

Hours later, he was told that he had a nine-centimeter cancerous tumor smack in the middle of his chest.

“I was completely blindsided,” Valdes, 23, said Tuesday from the PGA Tour’s Biltmore Championship, where he is playing on a sponsor’s exemption. “I mean, of course I felt good. It was just I had a lung infection. That’s the only reason I went in.

“We never would’ve found it without that, and it might have been too late at that point in time, so I truthfully got a little bit lucky that we found it as early as we did.”

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Valdes had gotten engaged a little more than a week earlier when he received his devastating diagnosis. He played four years at Auburn, winning an NCAA team title in 2024, and in spring 2025 was ranked No. 2 in the PGA Tour University Ranking, which gave him exempt status on the Korn Ferry Tour for the remainder of the year.

He played in 11 events, tied for third at the Price Cutter Charity Championship and made the cut in all three PGA Tour events he played, the last coming just before Thanksgiving at the RSM Classic.

“It was a complete and total surprise. I had no idea. Just two weeks before I played the final stage of Q-School and felt fine,” he said. “Couple weeks before that played the RSM. I didn’t think anything was wrong. I was playing golf, and I wasn’t playing bad.”

Suddenly, golf didn’t matter.

Brendan Valdes during the second round of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Compliance Solutions Championship in Owasso, Oklahoma in October 2025.

Justin Edmonds

During chemotherapy and treatment, Valdes didn’t touch a club for more than six months, outside of the occasional putter and lob wedge while inside his house. Asked if he lost weight, he admitted that he actually gained 30 pounds, saying, “none of it was muscle, that’s for sure.”

Then, in June he was deemed cancer-free after a PET scan.

In the last three months, Valdes has attempted to get himself ready to play golf, not necessarily knowing which opportunity would arise. Two weeks ago, Biltmore Championship officials announced that Valdes would be part of the inaugural field in Asheville.

“It’s been a lot of work on trying to get back the stamina that I once had,” Valdes said Tuesday. “Just being out there walking 18 used to not feel like much of anything. I’m a younger guy. As soon as I came back, especially during the process, it was tough for me to walk to the mailbox. It’s taken a few months to get back to the point in time where I feel like I’m able to walk 18 holes and not be winded at all.

“So it’s been a lot of work doing that, a lot of going out and running some, doing a lot of training. But I would say the stamina process is the big part.”

Whatever happens this week at the Cliffs at Walnut Cove doesn’t matter. Just being able to stand on that first tee is a major achievement, although it’s always difficult for a fierce competitor to view it as such.

With the help of a medical extension, Valdes will have some Korn Ferry Tour status for 2027 and, if he’s feeling well enough, he can go to Q-School later this fall to attempt to secure better status, possibly even a PGA Tour card.

“The expectations are just to go out and have fun,” Valdes said. “I mean, of course I’m always going to try and win. I’m never going to play an event that I don’t feel like I have the ability to. But I’m just going to stay confident and committed and just go out there and have fun. That’s the expectation.

“I feel like I’m ready to compete.”

It may be mid-September, but finally, for Valdes, he gets his new start.