Sven Tumba


Sven Tumba was one of the most prominent Swedish ice hockey players of the 1950s and 1960s. He also represented Sweden in football as well as golf and became Swedish champion in waterskiing.
Johansson first became known as "Tumba" in the 1950s since there were other players with the same last name, and he grew up in the Swedish town of Tumba. In October 1960 he married his wife Mona, and five years later he, along with Mona, legally changed his family name to Tumba.
After his retirement from ice hockey, he became an accomplished golfer, a golf course designer, creator and organizer of golf exhibitions and tournaments, as well as an ambassador to the game of golf, even officially introducing the game of golf to the former Soviet Union.

Ice hockey

Tumba played for the Swedish club Djurgårdens IF from 1950 to 1966, winning eight Swedish Championships and leading the league top goal scorer three years. He had a lengthy international career, playing for Sweden at 14 IIHF World Championships, four Winter Olympics, named best forward at the 1957 and 1962 World Championships and top scorer at the 1964 Winter Olympics. He also captained the national team. Djurgården has retired number 5 in his honor.
Tumba still holds the Swedish scoring record of 186 goals for the Swedish national team.
In 1997, he was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame and was in 1999 awarded the "Best Swedish Ice-hockey Player of All Times", outvoting prominent players such as Peter Forsberg and Mats Sundin.
Tumba was the first European player to attend an NHL training camp, with the Boston Bruins in 1957. He reportedly received a $50,000 contract offer from the Bruins after scoring a goal against the New York Rangers in a preseason exhibition game as well as making five appearance for the Rangers Quebec Aces minor league team. However, Tumba turned down the offer as he would no longer have been eligible to play amateur hockey for the Swedish national team.
As a player:
Ice hockey projects:
In the mid-50s Tumba played for Djurgårdens IF, the team which he also became Swedish Champions with. He also represented the Swedish national team. He played one game for the national team.

Honours

Club

;Djurgårdens IF:
After a successful career in ice hockey and football, Tumba dedicated himself to golf as a player, golf course designer and ambassador of the sport. Tumba is widely recognized as an important, maybe the most important, person for introducing golf as a widely spread sport in Sweden.
Having been introduced to the game of golf for the very first time, being over the age of 30, he reached a scratch handicap in 1970, at 39 years of age, when he also won the Scandinavian International Amateur Match-play Championship and was selected, as one of the four best amateur players in the country, to the Swedish national team at the 1970 Eisenhower Trophy in Madrid, Spain.
He turned professional the following year and in 1974, he qualified, as one of the two best professionals in the country, to represent Sweden in the 1974 World Cup in Caracas, Venezuela.
However, concerning golf in Sweden, he is not firstly remembered for his record as a player, but for his contributions to popularizing the game and putting Sweden on the map of the world of golf. He toured around in Sweden as the main attraction in inaugurations and anniversaries at golf clubs, showing his popular golf clinic, playing exhibition matches and drawing attention in media and among people, who not formerly did know about the game. His successful efforts to organize exhibitions in Sweden with Arnold Palmer in 1968 and Jack Nicklaus in 1969, was followed by the professional invitation tournament Volvo Open, which took place in Sweden in 1970 and 1971. In 1973 the Scandinavian Enterprise Open tournament was established, with Tumba as its founder, and it soon became one of the richest ones on the European Tour.
During the period of time for Tumbas golf career, the number of members in Swedish golf clubs increased 50 times, from around 12,000 at the beginning of the 1960s to approximately 600,000 in the middle of the 1990s.
In 1985 he received The Merit Sign in Gold by the Swedish PGA. On the 100th anniversary of the Swedish Golf Federation in 2004, he was named the most influential person in the history of golf in that country, ahead of people such as all-time women's golf great Annika Sörenstam.
Tumba also officially introduced the game of golf to the former Soviet Union.
Golf projects:
Amateur
Professional
Tumba also wrote numerous books: Tumba says it all, Tumba's hockey school, as well as My rich life .

Personal life

Tumba was survived by his wife Mona and their four sons, Tommie, born 1962, Johan, born 1964, Stefan, born 1970 and Daniel, born 1982. Both Tommie and Johan became golf professionals. Johan previously played on the European Tour and finished tied 13th in the 1989 Scandinavian Enterprise Open and later became a successful professional long driving competitor.
For most of his retirement, Sven Tumba and his wife lived in West Palm Beach, Florida, returning to Sweden for the summer.

Death

He died on 1 October 2011 after being on the Danderyds sjukhus hospital for three months due to an infection in the hip. At the time of his death, he was both a Swedish and an American citizen, but not registered as living in Sweden. He had the ambition to became that before his death, but quickly became to weak to manage necessary formality. He was subsequently honored prior to the Swedish hockey league Elitserien games that were played that day, with a one-minute silence. His body was buried at the Engelbrekt Church in Östermalm, Stockholm, on 20 October 2011. Approximately 500 friends and relatives arrived at the church to leave flowers and honour Sven Tumba.