Sam Weinman of Golf Digest took a phone call from Tom Lehman in which the 1996 Champion Golfer of the Year revealed something shocking.

The year prior to hoisting the Claret Jug, a year in which Lehman played 18 events on the PGA Tour and won at Colonial, he was battling colon cancer. Indeed, Colonial was Lehman’s second start after a month-long layoff following surgery to remove cancerous polyps.

All of this was heretofore unbeknownst to pretty much everyone.

“It really didn’t seem to me it was worth discussing,” the five-time PGA Tour winner told Weinman. “I never had to deal with Stage 4 cancer or go through chemo or any of those awful things,” Lehman said. “Mine was early Stage 1 cancer, so why should I make a big deal out of it?”

Certainly, there are those for whom the disease’s ravages are far greater, yes, but still, to say nothing? That speaks to an incredible strength of character: a hard-nosed avoidance of any appearance of looking for sympathy or excuse making, as well as plenty of perspective as to where he disease fit in the pantheon of wretched afflictions.

So, why is Lehman saying something now? Out of a desire to help others, it turns out.

This week’s PGA Tour Champions event is the Cologuard Classic this week. Cologuard is an at-home colon cancer screening product. It was developed by the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. David Ahlquist, Lehman’s doctor during his cancer treatment.

Beyond this: Lehman knows his story is significant for a much broader swath of the male population than we’d usually label as “at risk of colon cancer.” Lehman was only 36 in the spring on 1995 when he was diagnosed, and it was mostly coincidence that revealed the disease.

Leading up to the 1995, Masters, Lehman was dealing with a full plate of the aches and pain that afflict anyone who makes thousands of golf swings year after year. Usually pill avoidant, Lehman popped Advil three days in a row, which led to internal bleeding.

All of this led ultimately to Lehman landing at the Mayo clinic and the malignant polyp discovery. So, again, Lehman’s story is relevant well beyond the gray-haired set. .

“For me the scary part is when you think about the percentages. When they catch the cancer in an early stage, like I had it, the survival rate is 98 percent. When it gets beyond the colon, it goes down to something like 2 percent. What if I didn’t take that Advil that led to the bleeding? At the time I was 36, and I never would have gone to get a colonoscopy. It would have just grown and grown and grown.”

Indeed. Physicals. Annual trips to the dentist. Prostate exams. Colonoscopies. These are all torturous, thoroughly unpleasant things. Yet they are all massively better than finding out you’re terminally ill with something that was treatable if caught sooner.

We don’t want to lose a GolfWRX Member to something that could have been prevented, so listen to Tom Lehman and don’t skimp on the regimen of screenings.