One part of the local golf scene especially hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic last year was the tradition of charity golf events in the Coachella Valley.

Many of those events take place in the winter and early spring in the desert, just about the time the COVID-19 virus was starting to shut down golf facilities. Getting one of the larger events in the desert started again for 2021 has been a long and determined effort, said the tournament’s founder.

“In January (of 2020) we all know the virus kind of came about,” said Brett Shoopman, assistant pro at Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert and the namesake of the Shoopy Scramble, a tournament that raises awareness of skin cancer issues and raises funds for the Lucy Curci Cancer Center at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. “The tournament was sold out by the first part of February and now I was getting a little worried if we are going to be able to host it again or not. Then I said you know Ryan (Szydlowski, director of golf at Desert Willow), we are not going to be able to do it.”

The eighth playing of the event will be April 18 on both the Firecliff and Mountain View courses at Desert Willow, with 256 golfers in the field. But many of those golfers have been on hold to play in the event since last year’s cancellation, when the tournament was scheduled to be played about the same time when golf courses in Riverside County were shut down by the pandemic.

“We postponed it. I felt it was probably the best thing to do, not even try to have it,” said Shoopman, himself a survivor of melanoma. “So thank goodness for the Desert Willow team, the city of Palm Desert, everyone gets involved, my committee. We just decided to try for November. Obviously, that didn’t work, either.”

The true work came in rescheduling to November, and then having to postpone the tournament a second time, Shoopman said.

“To call everyone and say it’s canceled, to take in all their checks, to process everything, then to find out which ones couldn’t make November, to give them their money back, and then to re-fill it with another person, it was actually so much work,” Shoopman said. “And then to do it all again in November, to tell people we can’t do it in November, we are going to go for April, well, I can’t be here in April, so I had to give them their money back. That was the kind of work behind the scene.”

Now, with Riverside County dropping to the less-restrictive red tier and with golf having reopened in the county last summer, the Shoopy Scramble will be played for the eighth time in the last nine years. But Shoopman and his tournament organizers still must abide by some COVID-19 restrictions.

Still limited in facility availability

“Food, drinks, prizes, games, everything is outdoors, out on the course,” Shoopman said. “We aren’t even using the clubhouse. I didn’t want to plan to order tablecloths and napkins and get all the food and beverage involved when really we already knew, why take that chance.”

Shoopman’s passion for the tournament is personal, since he was diagnosed with melanoma in 2012, with a reoccurrence in 2019. A lifelong Coachella Valley resident, Shoopman was told by doctors that the cancerous spot on his abdomen was likely from years in the sun as a youth swimming for a local swim team.

“I just always felt growing up here that I was invincible,” Shoopman said. “Knowing that I had a little spot on my belly that could take my life. Wow, how off-guard was I to not even realize I was dealing with something?”

If Shoopman didn’t know about the dangers of skin cancer in an area like the Coachella Valley, he figured other people probably didn’t know either. That was the reason for starting the tournament, to get the message out about skin cancer and the intense sun in the desert.

“It’s a vendetta. It’s a personal vendetta for me,” Shoopman said. “I lost my father when I was young. I’ve seen people’s families disrupted from cancer. I feel like skin cancer is the No. 1 growing cancer, but no one wants to talk about it.”

The 2019 event raised more than $34,000 for the Lucy Curci Cancer Center at Eisenhower, with the money helping the Rancho Mirage center buy a vectra body-scanning machine. More importantly for Shoopman, the tournament has had more personal results.

“I’ve got (a dermatology visit) as a routine part of my year now,” said Szydlowski, “It’s like a dental appointment now. And I likely wouldn’t have taken it that seriously. And I need to.”

That kind of feedback is what made Shoopman want to work hard to get the Shoopy Scramble restarted in 2021 after the pandemic.

“I’ve got people coming into the golf shop constantly showing me a patch on their forehead, saying because of you, Brett, I got myself checked and they removed this stuff off of me,” Shoopman said. “Good. Keep doing it. These are the things that hit me in my heart pretty hard, that these people are recognizing the danger.”

Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @Larry_Bohannan. Support local journalism: Subscribe to the Desert Sun.