How Swede it has been for 27 years in the Myrtle Beach World Am

Lars-Eric Lindahl has lived in several countries over the past three decades while working for the ASEA Brown Boveri (ABB) electrical engineering company.

Anders Liedholm has moved to Kissimmee, Fla., and Gunnar Heintz has largely remained in his native Sweden over the years.

No matter where they have been at the time, however, the three friends, ABB coworkers and Swedish compatriots have known exactly where to find each other the week before Labor Day.

They have been meeting on the Grand Strand for the Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship for each of the past 26 years.

“Even though we’ve moved different places, we always made sure we came back here,” Liedholm said.

Lindahl and Liedholm have participated in the tournament 27 consecutive years, and Heintz is in his 26th consecutive World Am.

Because they are of relative age and playing ability – they are between the ages of 60 and 65 and have handicap indexes around 12 – they play in the same flight, which this year is Flight 38 for Mid-Senior Men.

In 1990, Lindahl and Liedholm were living in Massachusetts while working for a few years on a project to bring hydropower to New England from James Bay in Canada when they saw an ad in Golf Digest for the tournament and entered.

“After two or three years it became a tradition, and you don’t want to break it,” Lindahl said.

“They called me and said, ‘Gunnar, you need to come over and play golf,’ and we are all still on that train,” Heintz said. “This is an excellent place to get together to play golf, and it’s always at a fixed time so you can plan it with work and families.”

Through the years traditions have formed, particularly dinner rituals. “We have a scheme almost,” Lindahl said.

They usually arrive the Thursday night prior to the tournament and immediately order Domino’s Pizza, which they eat with some beer in their room or condo. “It’s not available in Sweden,” Lindahl explained.

Friday night is reserved for a Calabash seafood buffet, and Saturday has become a lobster dinner cooked by Liedholm, this year at the Barefoot Resort condo they have rented for the past several years. They serve it Swedish style: cooked the previous day, seasoned with salt and dill and served cold, accompanied by multiple varieties of Schnapps.

Sunday is generally an Indian restaurant, as both Lindahl and Liedholm have lived and worked in India and have “kind of drawn a habit to this food,” Lindahl said.

The trio generally attends the World’s Largest 19th Hole at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center after each of the first four rounds, but they maintain an appetite and leave early so they can hit a restaurant. They usually eat ribs on Monday, steamed blue crabs on Tuesday, and Italian food on Wednesday or Thursday. They traditionally end the week at a Japanese hibachi steakhouse on Friday.

The trio also settled into a playing routine prior to the tournament. The used to play two rounds per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but have cut it back to one round per day as the years have passed. The rounds would often be followed by stops at the Studebakers or Xanadu nightclubs before those shut down, but rest has since become more valued than nightlife.

Heintz and Lindahl have only gone on the beach one time over their 26 and 27 trips, and it was when Liedholm’s young niece was on the trip and wanted to go in the ocean. “We were more or less forced,” Heintz said. “If we want water we have showers in the room.”

They have had an amazing lack of success for their combined 80 years in the tournament. They have never sniffed the championship in their flight, and true to form none were in the top 20 entering Thursday’s final round.

“We don’t see it as a chance to win, it’s just for fun and to meet people and play different organized rounds of golf,” Lindahl said.

Liedholm did win $200 for a skin last year and had a hole in one in the tournament, though he didn’t receive a prize, and Lindahl won a pin proximity prize one year and last year carded a low round in his flight to win a $25 gift certificate.

“We come for friendship and good times, that’s why we come here,” said Liedholm, who has 26 World Am-logoed shirts hanging in his closet that he has never worn.

Liedholm also defeated fellow Swede and world billiards champion Ewa Mataya Laurance of Conway last year in a game of 9-ball, as Laurance annually takes on challengers during the 19th Hole at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.

“We think she was on the friendly,” Heintz said. “We talk to her a lot here every year.”

Lindahl and Heintz both live in Vasteras, Sweden, so they catch up occasionally, but with Liedholm now in Kissimmee, Fla., he sees his other two World Am cronies less frequently.

Heintz’s wife, Asa, usually makes the trip from Sweden, as well. But their grandson, Hekter, was turning 10 years old this week, and he recently questioned his grandparents for the first time about why his birthday party is always early and they’re never around on his actual birthday.

Missing the trip wasn’t an option for Heintz, so his wife took one for the team and remained home in Sweden this year to appease Hekter.

Lindahl and Liedholm never had a doubt they, and the World Am, would take precedence.

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 5:33 PM with the headline "How Swede it has been for 27 years in the Myrtle Beach World Am."