PHOENIX, Arizona — A year’s worth of work for Tiffany Nelson-Thorne pays off starting today as the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, the season-ending tournament for the PGA Tour Champions, begins at Phoenix Country Club.
As executive director of the event since 2016, Nelson-Thorne has dealt with an array of issues, including finicky Champions Tour players, inquiries from members at the host venue — which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year — and demands from sponsors, among others.
One curveball she did not see coming? Receiving a diagnosis of Stage 1 triple-negative breast cancer just six months into her job, and only two months after successfully overseeing her first championship.
But that’s exactly what happened to Nelson-Thorne at age 43 in January 2017.
“My attitude was I’ll beat it,” she recalled recently. “I was always really upbeat about it. Why? I don’t know, because I’m not typically a glass half full person. I try to be, but I’m usually not.”
An intense chemotherapy regimen took its toll, including hair loss and debilitating exhaustion, yet she still worked as much as possible. “I would be on some tournament calls,” she says. “I would even go into the office sometimes. But it got harder and harder to keep coming in with my energy levels at the time.”
That left her concerned about keeping her then brand new gig, which had just moved from Desert Mountain Country Club to Phoenix Country Club. “I just got this job. I’m a girl (there are currently just a handful of female executive directors on the PGA Tour Champions). If they bring someone in, that person's going to want this job, right? What if he does it better, right? Those were my first thoughts.”
Greg McLaughlin, then president of the PGA Tour Champions, did bring in Ian Knight, who had run the tournament previously. “I did that merely to give her some ground cover and support, and the two of them worked very well together,” McLaughlin says. “In the end, she trusted him and thought it was a good move. But it was Tiffany’s tournament. She ran it, executed on everything, and led the effort. She did a great job.” So much so that the PGA Tour Champions recognized her efforts with an Outstanding Achievement Award that year.
More importantly, after completing treatment, she was declared cancer free in August 2017.
“I asked the doctors to explain the difference between cancer free and remission,” she says. “They said, ‘Well, there's still a little trace of cancer in remission.’ But they said I was completely cancer free. I knew I could beat the cancer, but it was just a relief to hear that. Then it was, OK, let’s get back to normal. Let’s get the hair back. I also had a double mastectomy and underwent reconstruction.”
“She just really had such a positive attitude,” McLaughlin says. “It was a job she always wanted and was very comfortable doing. She just willed herself through it. I’m sure there were tough moments, but we never saw those. She was not going to let it get her down, which just showed her mental toughness to achieve the objective. To say that year (2017) went almost seamlessly was not an exaggeration, even for someone who went through what she did.”
Seven years later Nelson-Thorne is healthy and more than ready for the 35th Schwab Cup Championship. She remains as busy as ever as executive director, a more hectic role than people might think.
“They do everything,” says McLaughlin, who became World Golf Foundation CEO and president of The First Tee in 2018. “They’re responsible for volunteer recruitment, dealing with sponsors, fundraising, selling tickets, the pro-am. She’s intimately involved with everything. You have to deal with the host club and members, local media, police, fire departments, physical structures, parking, the list goes on. People think it’s a one-week-a-year job and I just laugh. You are literally working on it 12 months a year and there’s a crescendo that leads to the tournament. There’s always some issue going on. And she did all of that in 2017 while battling cancer.”
Despite a full plate at work, which includes supervising a full-time team of three, six to eight interns, and approximately 20 temporary tournament support staff, Nelson-Thorne manages to make time to help others dealing with cancer. Like recently serving a term as the board president for Cancer Support Community Arizona.
“I loved their message,” she says. “They are there to support anyone going through cancer, and not just the person but their family, too.”
Nelson-Thorne incorporated her support of cancer awareness into this year’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship by adding a 5K walk around the Phoenix Country Club course. The event will be held on Saturday morning before third-round play begins and will support the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. She also provides support when possible to other breast cancer patients, including her own mother, who was diagnosed four years ago but is healthy now.
“I get calls from people who have friends going through treatment,” she says. “Everyone’s case is different but I tell them the biggest thing is your attitude. I never had to convince myself I would beat it. I think it was the competitiveness in me. If I golf, I want to beat everyone I’m golfing with, including my husband (Brian Thorne, who is general manager at Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale).”
In fact, golf has been a constant presence in Nelson-Thorne’s life. Introduced to the game at age 3 by her father, she grew up playing at Randall Oaks Golf Club in her native West Dundee, Illinois. She then played in high school and at Purdue University before heading west to Arizona to begin a career in the golf industry. Jobs included running her own golf event business, and working in sales and business development at various Arizona courses, including TPC Scottsdale, where she stayed for nine years before assuming her current role.
“I love what I do, but there's definitely a before and after point in my life now,” she says. “I have more perspective. I always say it's a golf tournament. We’re not curing cancer. Are we really getting stressed out about something? We can fix it.”
“There are some great female leaders who are running tournaments, but I would put Tiffany at the top of the list, regardless of gender,” McLaughlin says. “PGA Tour Champions is lucky to have her.”
