Editor's note: Tim Simpson is making his Champions Tour debut this week at The Boeing Championship at Sandestin. The four-time PGA TOUR champion, who turned 50 last Saturday, underwent brain surgery last year to help alleviate the affects of a benign essential tremor in his hands. This story, originally published on May 24, 2005, chronicles the successful operation, and Simpson's determination to return to the upper echelon of the game he loves.

“I’m tickled to death,” Simpson said Wednesday. “For a guy who 15 months ago was laying on an operating table having his brain probed into, to be able to make my Champions Tour debut and be healthy is a blessing.”

The operation lasted nine hours. Tim Simpson was awake the whole time, although thankfully, he doesn’t remember what it felt like when the doctors bored those holes into his skull.

He does know, however, that the brain surgery he underwent on March 1, 2005, while risky, has given him a chance at once again playing the kind of golf that enabled him to win four PGA TOUR events in his prime.

“I never lost faith that somehow, some way, someone would help me,” Simpson said. “I may never be 100 percent. But I feel like with the talent I have left and with the incredible desire I have, there are still great things in store for me.”

Simpson, who was 49 at the time, opted to have the “deep brain stimulation” as a last resort after trying to cope, unsuccessfully, with a benign essential tremor in his left hand. The condition is hereditary -- his grandparents and a sister are also afflicted -- and unrelated to a bout with Lyme disease about five years before the tremor was diagnosed in the mid-1990s.

Away from the golf course, you’d never know anything was wrong – unless you asked Simpson to pour you a cup of coffee. His hand would “shake like crazy” and you’d be lucky if half the coffee ended up in the cup.

On the golf course, though, it was a different story.

The decline started with his putter, but Simpson did not simply have the “yips,” as some people suggested. The club shook, sometimes uncontrollably as he addressed the ball. Usually, but not always, the tremor stopped as he started his backswing.

Simpson remembers a day on the range, though, when his left hand shook so badly he couldn’t even take the club back.

“I came back completely frustrated,” he said. “Butch Harmon once called me the best ball-striker he’d seen in 30 years. I felt like an Olympic sprinter, once respected by his peers, who now had to run with a 100-pound backpack.”

Simpson tried medication, which only left him lethargic. Some doctors suggested Botox treatments to deaden the muscles –- only they weren’t sure exactly where to inject the drug. The accompanying six-month layoff was another issue.

Tim Simpson's only start in 2006 came at the Athens Regional Foundation Classic. (Badz/PGA TOUR/ WireImage)

Meanwhile, Simpson attempted to play on the Nationwide Tour with little success.

“It’s so frustrating to know the talent is still in there,” Simpson said. “But if I missed a green, I’d shake so bad with my left hand that I’d flub easy pitch shots. If I missed a green, I knew it would be a bogey.”

Simpson’s wife, Leigh Ann, suggested Simpson have an MRI late in the summer of 2004. “She said, ‘I didn’t marry you for your golf career,’” Simpson recalled. “But if you ever want to play again, I know there is someone out there who can help you.”

The neurosurgeon who read the exam sent Simpson to see Dr. Joe Smith at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, who specializes in the DBS procedure.

“I told him point blank,” Simpson says. “Quite honestly this scares me to death, and he said, ‘rightfully so.’”

Smith introduced Simpson to Dr. Kapil Sethi, who first augmented Simpson’s medicine. At that point, the golfer had no illusions.

“I knew it was just a band-aid,” Simpson said. “Pressure exacerbated it and made it worse. You’re standing, practicing at home, and your hand is shaking like you have Parkinson’s. You want to slit your throat.”

When he played “rock solid” at the 2005 BellSouth Panama Championship only to miss the cut by six shots, Simpson was ready to take action. He told Sethi and Smith that he wanted to try the DBS surgery.

The surgery didn’t come without risks – blood clots, infection and rejection, to name a few. Simpson had a month to get nervous. During that time, he was befriended by a former major league pitcher, Bill Landrum, who had DBS to alleviate the symptoms of a severe case of Parkinson’s disease.

“He was phenomenal in encouraging me and telling me that it would be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Simpson recalled. “The day before, I was all packed up, and Bill called. He said, ‘How are you doing?’ I said, ‘I am absolutely scared to death.

“He told me in 24 hours I would be a changed man. He said, ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you play well and win on the Champions Tour.’ It was like God bonked me on the head.”

For nine hours that next day, Simpson laid on the table in the operating room. His head was bolted – literally -- into a halo. An MRI and CAT scan helped the doctors map Simpson’s brain and decide where to inject the four exploratory probes.

Once Smith was sure he had the right spot, he inserted the electrode that would carry the electrical impulses to Simpson’s brain. He gave Simpson a cane to hold.

“Then they cut me on,” Simpson recalled. “I felt electricity go down the left side of my body to my Achilles. I felt it go down my arm and the club went still. Then they knew they had hit a grand slam.”

The pacemaker, which Simpson says looks like a deck of cards under his skin, was implanted in his chest just above the upper left pectoral muscle. The electrode then travels under the clavicle, up his neck, around his left ear and across the top of his head.

Simpson was in intensive care for 36 hours and in the hospital for a total of three days. The day he got home – after his wife left to run some errands – Simpson got in the car, drove to his club nearby and began to chip balls.

“I knew I wouldn’t be happy until I did,” Simpson explained. “The first one landed about a foot. The next one I holed out. I said, wow. At that point I got pretty emotional. It had hit me.”

Simpson occasionally goes in for “tune-ups” he says feel like he’s stuck his finger in a light socket for two or three seconds. He travels with a clicker -- not unlike a garage door opener, he says – so he can turn the pacemaker off when he goes through airport security.

Throughout the life-altering process, Simpson never lost his sense of humor. He tells his wife she can’t be mad “when I mess up because I’ve got a hole in my head.” And you don’t want to stand next to him in a thunderstorm, he cautions with a chuckle.

“Some guys ask me, why did the surgery take nine hours?” Simpson said, laughing heartily. “I tell them, shoot, it took 8 ½ to find my brain, and then it took another 30 minutes to get the electrode into something the size of a pea.”

Simpson, though, knows DBS surgery is no laughing matter. He’s thankful for the support of his family, his doctors and his agent, Robert Wrenn, a former TOUR pro. He doesn’t plan on wasting the second chance he’s gotten, and he hopes to be an inspiration to others facing serious illness.

“This story transcends sports,” Simpson said. “Hopefully people can look at me and see someone who had everything taken from him but never gave up. I am back playing and fulfilling my dream.

“If I can help one person, then nine hours on the operating table and all this foreign stuff in my body will be worth it.”