Brumfield was the #1 player on the men's professional racquetball tour for most of the 1970s, winning 4 championships and dominating most of the tournaments he participated in.
Steve Keeley ranks Brumfield as the 4th greatest racquetball player of all time, after Cliff Swain, Marty Hogan, and Sudsy Monchik.
[3] Brumfield retired from professional racquetball in the early 1980s, settling into a successful career as an attorney in San Diego.
This rivalry fueled the great popularity of the sport at that time, and was even the subject of a 1978 LeRoy Neiman painting which was widely published in poster form.
[citation needed] Brumfield also won the outdoor national racquetball singles championships in 1974 and 1975[7] in his only attempts at that title.
In April 2013, at age 65, Brumfield (with partner Bull Sterken) won his most recent national doubles title, also in Men's Golden Master's.
Brumfield has won several Golden Master's (55 and older) doubles titles with Eric Campbell (another former racquetball pro), and at age 55 he won the 2004 Senior's (35 and older) national paddleball doubles title with Mike Wisniewski, giving nearly 20 years to some of his younger opponents in that age group.
Brumfield plays occasional exhibition matches with reigning open singles champions including Kelly Gelhaus, Chris Crowther, and Aaron Embry.
This quality of intelligence has allowed Brumfield to compete at an extremely high level all of his life, and to win on occasions where he was playing with fairly serious injuries.
On the professional tour, Brumfield set records for "delivering the most donuts" (games in which the opponent scored 0 points).
Brumfield generally makes his opponents move clumsily in the court by setting decoys and deceptions and forcing them out of position.
Brumfield's style is characterized by great patience, taking few chances and maintaining confidence that he will have other opportunities to close the point.
In June 1974, Sports Illustrated reported that "He has been known to intimidate opponents and referees with rackets, balls, words, gestures and interminable delaying routines when he needs rest.
[12] He was also the 2007 honoree at the Pig Roast & Human Sacrifice, a midwestern regional paddleball doubles tournament that honors a player's significant contributions to the game.
Brumfield is also noteworthy as a showman, and has at various times taken on racquetball opponents playing with a shoe or a bottle instead of a racket or paddle.
He has a penchant for what he calls his "science experiments" that can involve a novel way of gripping the racket, or a variation on footwork, or an unusual modification of a paddle, etc.
Brumfield still draws large and boisterous crowds when he competes at national tournaments and remains popular amongst fans.
He currently serves as in-house counsel to Pure Bioscience of El Cajon, California, a suburb of San Diego.