Brendan Valdes Returns to Korn Ferry Tour After Cancer Battle

Brendan Valdes returned to competitive golf this week at the Biltmore Championship in Asheville, North Carolina, eight months after doctors found a 9-centimeter tumor pressing against his heart and lung. The 23-year-old was diagnosed with primary mediastinal lymphoma on Jan. 1, derailing what was supposed to be his second season on the Korn Ferry Tour.

What was Valdes diagnosed with?

Valdes had just gotten engaged to his girlfriend, Rachel Gourley, and was preparing for the new season when a cold turned into something more serious. He began coughing up blood and went to an emergency room in Orlando on New Year's Day. Doctors initially suspected bronchitis before further testing found the mass in his chest.

How did Valdes's treatment go?

Chemotherapy took a toll well beyond anything golf had asked of him. Valdes gained roughly 30 pounds of non-muscle weight during treatment and endured a collapsed lung, pneumonia and a hole in his lung while still undergoing chemo. He received his final chemotherapy dose on May 15, and a PET scan in early June showed no evidence of cancer remained. By then, he had gone more than six months without touching a golf club.

How has he returned to competition?

In late June, Valdes and his caddie, Tiago Barni, played a long-promised match at Isleworth Golf and Country Club near Orlando. Playing from the tips for the first time in more than six months, Valdes shot 3-under 69. Weeks later, he made his first competitive start at a G-Pro Tour event in Huntsville, Alabama, firing a second-round 62 and finishing third in the 54-hole tournament.

Six months without touching a club ended with a third-place finish in his first start back.

Valdes finished second in the 2024 PGA Tour University graduating class after helping Auburn win the NCAA Championship that year, and he made all three of his PGA Tour cuts last season, including a tie for 20th at the 3M Open. His next chapter begins with Korn Ferry Tour status through a medical extension, and this week he's playing the Biltmore Championship, the first of eight events in the PGA Tour's Fall Series.

"I feel like I'm sharp," Valdes said this week. His immediate path to full PGA Tour status runs through this year's Q-School, with the Korn Ferry Tour medical extension serving as the safety net in the meantime.