Professional golfer Kim Kaufman battling breast cancer at age 33

Kim Kaufman will find out the day after Christmas if she needs chemotherapy. Given her age, 33, the chances are high, but she’ll have six and a half weeks of radiation regardless.

Kaufman kept telling people it hadn’t sunk in yet. Even after the lumpectomy she felt fine. The length of the 4-inch scar, however, forced to her lie down in the doctor's office. She'd expected something much smaller.

But while she couldn’t practice or work out, she was bored more than anything else.

“If you saw me in the street, you wouldn’t know,” Kaufman told Golfweek from her Texas home. “I think that confuses people because when they think of a cancer patient, they’re thinking of the bald person who is tired and cold and weak. But that’s really a chemo patient, which may be me in about a month.”

The diagnosis of cancer really started to hit when she was forced to withdraw from the final stage of December's LPGA Qualifying School. Kaufman isn't sure when she'll make it back to competitive golf. One thing she does know: She don't won't rush it.

Kaufman played her first full season on the LPGA in 2014 after a successful stint at Texas Tech. The 6-foot-tall native of Clark, South Dakota, has mostly played on the Epson Tour in recent years, where she’s a three-time winner. A published author who would’ve gone to law school had golf not worked out, Kaufman has always been more substance than flash.

She delivered the news to friends that she had invasive ductal carcinoma in a positive, straightforward manner.

“I feel like I was more emotional than she was,” said Cheyenne Knight, who relied heavily on Kaufman as an LPGA rookie.

Angela Stanford found herself apologizing to Kaufman in the locker room at Shady Oaks Country Club after receiving the news. Kaufman had shared her cancer diagnosis earlier that day in the parking lot at the Fort Worth club and an overwhelmed Stanford, whose mother died of cancer two years ago, initially froze.

She’s just so young. And so healthy. How could this be?

When Kaufman went in to get her lumpectomy, Stanford came over and cleaned the house and restocked the shelves. Kaufman and her husband, Johan Wolkesson, kept noticing little extras like new laundry detergent and paper towels.

“We were finding things all week,” said Kaufman. “It was like a little easter egg hunt.”

Kaufman’s breast cancer journey began at her annual wellness exam in September 2023 when her doctor off-handedly said she had some dense fatty issue on the left side.

“I was like OK, thanks,” said Kaufman. “That didn’t mean anything to me.”

By late spring/early summer of this year, Kaufman began noticing that a dimple had started to form. She talked herself out of thinking much of it, telling herself she was just being paranoid.

During an off-week in late September before the Epson Tour Championship, Kaufman went in for her annual exam. Her doctor said she needed to get a mammogram.

“Even then I wasn’t really nervous,” said Kaufman. “It wasn’t like I was playing the Tour Championship with this huge weight on me.”

She entered the week 14^th in the Race for the Card. The top 15 earn LPGA status for 2025. Kaufman opened with a 74 in Indian Wells, California, to miss the cut and ultimately finished 16^th in the standings, missing her card by one spot.

When she got home, Kaufman went in for the mammogram and was called back for an ultrasound. Then came the radiologist.

“He came in and showed me, ‘Here’s the mass we’re looking at,’ ” recalled Kaufman. “I don’t know all the words he said, but I remember laying there thinking Oh, I have breast cancer. He knows that.’ ”

She was back the next day at 6:15 a.m. for a biopsy and got the call that she had cancer on a Saturday morning.

A further test revealed that she carries a genetic mutation.

“You think you’re going to get here’s what you have, and here’s what we know and here’s what we’re going to do, but in reality … it’s an evolving diagnosis,” said Kaufman. “You’re going to get a new test and maybe take a step forward or a step back.”

When they removed the tumor, which was larger than doctors originally thought at 3 ½ centimeters, they found clear margins. But they also found Grade 2 cancer in a lymph node.

She’ll meet with her oncologist on the day after Christmas to find out if chemotherapy is needed before radiation.

Kaufman has a date set in October for a double mastectomy, should she choose to have one. She’ll have to wait six months for her skin to heal before she can have the surgery.

“For me, when I first learned I was like let’s go, let’s do it. You want to fix stuff,” said Kaufman, “and you just have to wait. Kind of the hardest part sometimes.”

Stanford, Knight and Kaufman often play in the “One o’clock Game” at Shady, which is actually never at 1 p.m. The club's members have rallied to show support, as have LPGA and Epson Tour players, sending gift cards and meals and prayers.

Kaufman is grateful for it all, of course, but doesn’t want to make a fuss.

“I think she’s kind of a self-made person,” said Stanford. “She has done it on her own. It’s hard sometimes to be in that vulnerable position. … She needs as much as she can get, and she doesn’t know it yet. These people reach out and help because they know.”

Kaufman used to think it was cliche when people facing health scares posted things like, “If I can help one person …”

She doesn’t think that way anymore.

Kaufman has played professional golf for 11 years and is the third player known to be diagnosed with cancer in that timeframe.

LPGA player Lisa Ferrero was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 at age 31 and, on Valentine’s Day, had a mastectomy to remove a tumor that was 9 centimeters. Ferrero had discovered the lump 18 months prior, but a doctor told her she was too young to be concerned.

In 2017, a then 30-year-old Tiffany Joh had melanoma removed from her scalp. When the dermatologist called with the news, she told Joh that as someone of Asian descent, she wasn’t on the radar for this type of diagnosis.

“If I get one girl to go to their yearly [exam], that’s worth it,” said Kaufman. “As corny as I used to think that sounds sometimes. Everyone I’ve told I’m like, ‘Do you go? Do you go?

“Go, please. I’m begging you to go.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Professional golfer Kim Kaufman battling breast cancer age 33