Heroes: Todd Dempsey

TMF board member and celebrated sports writer Don Yaeger sat down with Todd Dempsey on February 22, 2008 for a glance into his life as a golf professional and unflappable brain tumor survivor.

As he steps to the green, lining up a 15-foot putt with thousands of dollars on the line, Todd Dempsey remains as cool as the other side of the pillow. 

Pressure? To Dempsey, this isn’t pressure. 

Photo Credit: Marc Feldman/Getty Images

“Given the last 10 years of my life, I have a whole different perspective,” said Dempsey as he prepared for last week’s PGA Tournament in Cancun, Mexico. 

To be sure, perspective is as much a strength for this golf professional as driving distance or putting accuracy. 

In 2004, Dempsey came home to his townhouse in Arizona and picked up a message, one he’ll never forget. “It was my doctor calling,” Dempsey said recently. “They left the message that the reason for the headaches I was having was…a brain tumor. What a message. We had discussed the possibility with the doctors previously, so I had prepared myself for the message. At least as well as you can ever prepare for that message. The only good part of the call was that the tumor was benign. It was growing, but wasn’t cancerous.” 

The call couldn’t have come at a less opportune time. 

Dempsey – whose name is etched on the NCAA individual golf championship trophy along with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson -- had struggled as a professional golfer in the years after leading Arizona State to the NCAA team golf title. Persistent back injuries and blinding headaches had taken him from a select spot on golf’s highest level to the minor leagues of the game. And even staying there was a weekly struggle. 

In the months before he found out about the tumor, Dempsey and his then fiancée, Melinda, had made the decision that Melinda would quit her job and travel full-time as Dempsey’s caddy. They had put money down on a new home and were planning their future together. Now they had to decide their next move, knowing that a craniotomy was in Dempsey’s future. 

Photo Credit: Scott Halleran/Getty Images

His career on the brink, Dempsey delayed the surgery for a year, playing nearly two dozen tournaments on the Nationwide Tour with a tumor growing at the base of his skull. 

Doctors successfully completed the surgery in 2002, cutting most all of the tumor away. “It was sitting on a nerve,” Dempsey said, “and if they had gone any further, they might have left long-term damage. So we made the decision to leave part of the tumor there, knowing it would continue to grow, and to use radiation to control it.” 

Dempsey’s recovery from the surgery and a subsequent operation was speedy compared to the rebuilding of his golf game. It took three tries at “Q school” – where PGA Tour hopefuls face off against each other every winter – for Dempsey to land back on the big tour in 2008. He did it by shooting some of the best golf of his life during the qualifying event, despite the fact that he had another MRI scheduled for the following week to monitor the tumor’s growth. 

“When I was in college, winning at golf was the most important thing in my life,” Dempsey said last week. “Now I realize that there are things so much more important. That’s given me a calmness that has benefited me, both on and off the course.” 

And it has won him a new round of admirers. He regularly receives emails from brain tumor patients letting him know that his fan club is growing. 

“Every letter touches you,” he said. “And they all remind me how fortunate I am.”