On New Year's Day, cancer ‘blindsided' him. Thursday, he played on Tour

Brendan Valdes, when asked if he’s sharp, says he’s sharp. S-h-a-r-p, sharp. Sharp sharp.

And if he weren’t bottom-of-a-golf-tee sharp?

He wouldn’t be teeing it up.

“I definitely wouldn’t want to take a sponsor invite spot,” he said, “if I didn’t feel like I could compete.

“But, yeah, I mean, the expectations are just to go out and have fun. 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.”

Tells you some things, doesn’t it?

For one, yes, this week, Valdes is playing on the PGA Tour, at the inaugural Biltmore Championship Asheville, via a sponsor exemption. But no, he says the invite shouldn’t be thought of as some sort of philanthropy. Dude’s a stick, after all. A year ago, he went for 3 for 3 in cuts made in the big leagues, and that followed a senior year at Auburn where his play moved him to No. 2 in the Tour’s college program, earning him Korn Ferry Tour starts. Valdes was on his way. But if someone is asking if Valdes is indeed sharp, that implies that maybe he hadn’t been, and on New Year’s Day, he said he was “blindsided.” He’d said he’d gotten a lung infection — “just a regular ole sickness” — and ironically, he’s happy he did.

Who knows, then, if anyone would have ever found the nine-centimeter tumor in the middle of his chest?

Things spiraled. There were low points, plural. Seeing his mom, Tammy, and fiance, Rachel Gourley, in the room when the diagnosis came. Then going through it all. He said there were complications. At the start, he hadn’t received proper treatment for the lung sickness. “That turned into a collapsed lung, pneumonia and hole in my lung, and that was while I was doing chemo,” he said. For a while, he also developed sores in his mouth that wouldn’t let him eat or drink; he went to the hospital for that. In a video shared by the PGA Tour’s social media team, Valdes also said he underwent six rounds of chemotherapy before being told he was cancer free.

“It came out of nowhere,” Valdes said. “I will say, yeah, golf definitely went secondary at that point. Try and make sure I can get through it, try and make sure I was able to play golf again. As soon as I was able to do that and figure out that I would do that, then every once in a while if I felt good enough in between treatments I might be able to stand up and putt for 20, 30 minutes, do some stuff like that.

“Yeah, but golf was definitely secondary.”

For about six months, he didn’t play on a course.

When he did return, the process was slow.

He felt slow. His body. His swing. Thing is, J.M. Butler said, he’s the most positive guy he knows. Butler’s his best friend and a former Auburn teammate. In a video from the Korn Ferry Tour’s social media team, Butler said Valdes told him during visits that he’d recover, then go on asking about other folks. That’s Valdes.

“Just being out there walking 18 used to not feel like much of anything. I’m a younger guy,” Valdes said. “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. And, I mean, in golf personally I believe of course strength helps, especially wrist strength. I feel like that’s pretty big, especially in rough like this.

“But it’s more like the speed and the torque for me is another thing that I lost; trying to get back a lot of that mobility. So, again, it’s been a lot of training the last few months just to try to get back to where I was.”

And there he was Thursday.

They talked about him on Golf Channel. He teed off of hole 10. Made a par there. Bogeyed 11. Birdied 13.

Sharp.

“It was a long process and not a very fun one,” Valdes said, “but now that I’m back, feel like I put in quite a bit of work and a lot of time and effort to really try and get back to where I was.

“Now that I feel like I am back and I see all the guys out here, I feel like I’ll be able to go out there and compete. I mean, it was a lot of work, a lot of time and effort to try and get back what I lost of course during the whole process.

“Feel like I’m ready to compete.”