So I didn’t get the thing I usually hear last as I go out the door: “Wear your sunscreen.”
Before I teed off, I did remember to slather up my face, ears and the back of my neck, pretty much the only skin left exposed on a partly sunny but cool and windy late April day.
Three days later, I played on a mostly cloudy day that threatened but never turned into real rain. It didn’t occur to me to put on the s’cream.
Two days, two fairly similar sun profiles, in a season of the year in a region of the world that doesn’t automatically shout in your face, “Use your sunscreen, dummy.”
Mark Wishner’s message is gentler, but just as insistent.
Wishner’s interest in the subject of golf and skin cancer is personal – he had his first bout with basal cell carcinoma 20 years ago, another two years ago – and now it’s professional.
He is the founder and president of the Sun Safe Tee Program (www.sunsafetee.org), a Del Mar, Calif.-based nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness among golfers of the dangers of submitting our unprotected skin to the burning sun.
A typical round of golf, including warm-up, can push six hours. That’s a lot of time under the big lamp.
Wishner got in touch last week after a keyword search of his chosen subject turned up an April 27 column about Terry Lee, who is a survivor of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
A follow-up phone call found Wishner at Balboa Golf Course, a city of Los Angeles muni in Encino. He was there, with a dermatologist, to screen golfers for skin cancer.
It was no coincidence that May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month.
The doc looked at the exposed skin – face, ears, arms, legs – of anybody who stepped up to search for signs of cancerous or pre-cancerous lesions.
Wishner, 54, grew up in New Jersey and moved to San Diego in 1982. He was living in sunny Southern California in the era when having a tan was considered cool, a sign of status and affluence. He remembers putting on baby oil to enhance the browning effect.
Skin damage from the sun is cumulative, Wishner said, and most of us get the majority of our sun exposure early in life. Like most of us, Wishner didn’t think skin cancer could happen to him.
“All that caught up with me,” he said, “along with a lot of hours on the golf course.”
Sun Safe Tee grew out of Wishner watching a professional golf tournament on a typical hot SoCal day.
“I could see the players were baking pretty good in the sun,” he said. “It got me thinking, ‘I wonder who educates golfers about skin cancer?’ ”
The more he looked into it, he got his answer: Nobody.
Wishner approached a couple of dermatologists, including Dr. Curt Littler, the son of pro golf legend Gene Littler, to see what could be done to address the information vacuum about golf and skin cancer.
In 2007, Wishner launched Sun Safe Tee. It doesn’t sell anything – except a message.
“We don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, I can’t go out in the sun,’ ” he said. “But do it in a way that you take care of yourself. That’s really our message.”
Did you know:
• Two types of light come from the sun: visible light and ultraviolet light. Eighty percent of the sun’s UV rays can penetrate the atmosphere on a cloudy day.
• A typical cotton T-shirt has a UPF (UV protection factor) of between 6 and 10 on an open-ended scale where 10 is noon on a clear day. If you sweat, the number goes up, so even your clothing is no guarantee against sun damage.
• Sunscreen’s protection lasts only two hours, thus Sun Safe Tee’s motto: “Don’t burn, reapply at the turn.”
Sunscreen is not the only remedy on the course. Wear a hat that shades your face and ears; stay in the shade when possible; and hydrate, baby, which doesn’t mean drinking beer.
Sun Safe Tee’s sponsors include companies that market products such as Sun Sleeves, which slip under your golf polo to give you long-sleeve, moisture-wicking, 50-UPF protection; and Sun Guard, which you can add to your laundry to wash 30-UPF protection into your golf clothes.
Contributions to Sun Safe Tee are, of course, tax-deductible.
So, generally, are uncovered medical expenses … but the person who does your taxes, who might also be the person who gets in your ear about your uncovered skin, would probably prefer not to have to itemize them.
Bart Potter is an Olympia freelance writer. He can be reached at greygoatee06@comcast.net.
