CONWAY | Carl Hallberg didn’t begin playing golf until he was about 65.
While that might seem late in life to be picking up a new hobby, that was 35 years ago.
Hallberg turned 100 years old on Jan. 3, and he continues to defy the common standards of age by playing at least two rounds a week while also bowling on Fridays.
“It’s just another number but in some ways it’s unreal,” Hallberg said. “I’ve had a good run, I have to say that.”
Hallberg is not just playing. He’s playing quite well.
He’s been regularly shooting his age for about 15 years, and still regularly breaks 100 from the forward tees.
The Conway resident plays a round at Whispering Pines on Tuesdays, a nine-hole scramble at the CCU Hackler Course with fellow members of the Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Conway on Thursdays, and Fridays he bowls at Surfside Bowling Center.
Searching for an activity they could do together, his late wife got the Minnesota native into bowling within a few years of him picking up golf.
“In Minnesota you don’t golf in the winter, of course,” said Hallberg, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
He had to take a break from golf for several months early in 2024 due to a back issue, and he now plays with a back brace. But he’s back to his regular sporting routine, and occasionally adds another round to the mix.
His church group surprised him on Jan. 2 with a birthday celebration in the Hackler clubhouse following his Thursday nine holes, complete with a banner highlighting the happenings of his birth year, 1925.
“This is a little too much for me. I wasn’t expecting any of this stuff,” Hallberg said. “That’s the way our church is. It’s a fabulous church and the people, you couldn’t find a greater group of people.”

Drawn to the game
Taking up golf was probably inevitable, considering Hallberg’s proclivity for sports.
“At 4 or 5 years old I started kicking, throwing or hitting the ball in some shape or form,” Hallberg said. “I never gave (golf) too much thought. I played every sport you could think of. I can tell you the sports I didn’t play, and that’s horse polo and cricket and some of those oddball ones. . . . I can’t do any of those other sports now. No way.”
Hallberg recalls the day he decided to pick up a golf club.
“When I was in my 60s a friend of mine said I should try golf. I got into it, swinging the club like a baseball bat (at first),” Hallberg said. “That’s how I got started, and you know how golf is. Once you get started you’re hooked, then you keep on with it. The same with bowling. Both of them I don’t do very good now, you know. But I still want to keep doing this thing. It gets in your craw, you want to keep doing it.”
Hallberg played minor league baseball out of high school, and during his time in the Army he played on an all-star baseball team within the armed service.
He also coached several recreational youth sports over many years.
“My addiction is toward sports,” said Hallberg, who lived in Minneapolis for more than 70 years before moving to the Grand Strand more than 25 years ago, and worked in construction into his 80s. “I watch every sport there is on TV – women, girls and men. I don’t watch any other programs, just sports.”
Hallberg said his lowest nine holes was a 37 at the now-closed Conway Country Club. He recalls his lowest 18-hole score being about a 75.
“The game keeps going downhill, of course,” Hallberg said. “When I was into my 70s, at 150 (yards) I used a 6-iron. Now I can barely reach the green with a 3-wood. There’s something wrong with that. . . . It’s in my mind, but the body isn’t there.”

While his health has allowed him to continue playing, his attitude toward the game has been just as big of a factor.
“You can’t get frustrated,” Hallberg said. “There’s always another day. You have good days and bad days. You just do the best you can do. There’s no way I can reach a par-5 in three anymore, but if I get a good chip or pitch I can par it. I’m pretty good at laying it close to the pin. I’m happy with bogey golf.”
The Myrtle Beach golf community has been good to Hallberg.
He was gifted free golf with a cart and range balls for life by the Hackler Course on Jan. 2, and said he began receiving free golf at Whispering Pines when he turned 90.
Celebrating a century
Hallberg has three living children, including a son and daughter who live on the Grand Strand, and he has outlived one of his children. He said he has 19 grandchildren and great grandchildren, and he hopes to see a great, great grandchild some day.
“After that, I’m going to go for a great, great, great,” he joked.
He still drives himself to his golf outings, and he’s considering buying something newer to replace his 15-year-old car.
“I’ve been blessed. I’ve really been blessed,” he said. “You just go from year to year, and take each year as it comes.”

Hallberg has been an inspiration to his golf groups.
“He’s always positive. His glass is not half full, his glass is overflowing,” said Carl Schwartzkopf, a member of the Thursday group at Hackler and former professor in both the Horry-Georgetown Technical College (HGTC) turfgrass program and Coastal Carolina University PGA Golf Management Program.
Schwartzkopf said Hallberg consistently hits the ball down the middle and can chip and putt well, though Hallberg said his green reading skills have deteriorated over the past couple years.
The church group at Hackler has held a putting contest for the last several years, and Hallberg won it three straight years from 2020-2022.
Schwartzkopf recalls Hallberg playing with a student in CCU’s PGM program a couple years ago, and the student’s reaction to Hallberg’s game.
“He said, ‘The first two or three holes I thought he was just lucky. Hell, this guy is good.’ ”
How long does Hallberg want to keep playing golf?
“As long as I’m able to,” he said. “What point in time will that be? I don’t know. How long have I got on this earth? I’m still here. He don’t want me up there [yet].”
