This golfer always had hope

The Todd Demsey bandwagon rolled into Palm Desert over the weekend, packed with Melinda, who is Mrs. Demsey and pregnant and due in March, plus 18-month-old Maggie. Actually, it wasn’t really a bandwagon, but an RV, and it’s not just full of Demseys but dreams as well.

When the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic begins today, Demsey is starting over again too. At 35, he’s back on the PGA Tour for the first time in 11 years, thanks to a last-round 64 in qualifying school and an unbending desire not to be a victim of some rotten luck.

He shot 67-74 and missed the cut last week at the Sony Open in his return to the tour as a regular member, but that shouldn’t be seen as a huge setback for Demsey.

Two surgeries to remove a brain tumor -- those are setbacks, those are defining moments, those are what Demsey went through in order to finally be able to wheel his RV from tournament to tournament, his family by his side, so he could hit golf balls for a living, which is all he ever wanted to do anyway.

It has been a long ride. In 2002, Demsey missed the cut in 12 of his 27 tournaments on the Nationwide Tour and felt lousy. He had headaches and thought he had a sinus problem, but after antibiotics didn’t work, X-rays led to an MRI exam and then a diagnosis by his doctor late in the year. He had a large tumor behind his left sinus and growing into his brain.

His reaction was what anyone’s would be.

“Shocked and scared,” he said. “All of a sudden, we have a life-threatening thing.”

He wasn’t certain the tumor was benign for almost a year. He found out after a seven-hour surgical procedure by Robert F. Spetzler of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix in January 2003. The slow-growing tumor was about the size of a golf ball. He didn’t compete again until late April, and a second operation late that year removed the rest of the tumor, growing off a nerve.

Demsey had a scare the middle of last year that the tumor was growing back, but was cleared.

And now, he’s more concerned about his golf game than his tumor, or the back injury that cost him a year on the Nationwide Tour. Demsey didn’t say he was eager to make up for lost time, but he didn’t have to.

He described his tumor as a “rare, fluky thing” but never once asked why it happened to him.

“I feel pretty lucky, actually,” he said. “Just that I’ve been able to play golf for a living. I’ve never really felt anything except just lucky. A lot of people, their tumors aren’t benign. Some people have it a lot worse than I do.

“If I can weather all this, I can definitely stay out here and accomplish the goals I set out a long time ago.”

The former Torrey Pines High student played on the Arizona State team with Phil Mickelson.

Mickelson won the NCAA title as a senior, and Demsey won it the next year as a sophomore.

There was more. Demsey was a member of the 1993 Walker Cup team that beat Great Britain and Ireland, 19-5, and set a record for the biggest margin of victory, but back problems began after college.

He finally earned his PGA Tour card in 1997 but immediately found himself in trouble with his game. Demsey played 27 times and missed 18 cuts. His best result was a tie for 24th at the Greater Vancouver Open. He made a total of $41,774.

That put Demsey into the small time, the Nationwide Tour, where players concentrate their efforts on winning enough money to leave it. For Demsey, the Nationwide Tour was much more. That’s where he found his game again, not to mention his health, but only after nearly losing that as well.

He played in nearly 200 tournaments on the Nationwide Tour, and if that doesn’t qualify someone as a survival expert, nothing does.

“My game is better than the last time I was out here,” he said. “I have more control over the ball. I didn’t know what I was doing the first time. I played with just whatever talent I had and didn’t think my way around the course.”

Demsey says his patience and his short game are huge upgrades.

Those qualities are sure to come in handy this week during the Hope, a 90-hole experience in the necessity of birdie-making, all the while maneuvering over four courses, including a new one this year, SilverRock Resort. Charley Hoffman is the defending champion in the $5.1-million event, with the Classic Club serving as the host course for the third time.

Demsey had a busy day Wednesday in preparation, stopping by all four courses, but playing none of them.

He got his work in at the range but saw the courses from the vantage point of a golf cart. It’s a view he doesn’t take for granted.

--

thomas.bonk@latimes.com