Twosome Linked by Love of Competition : Trans-Miss Golf: Richardson and Myers, two-time runners-up, don’t have much in common. But each says he likes the company.

As they squinted toward the seventh fairway at The Farms Golf Club Friday afternoon, Kemp Richardson and Jim Myers seemed to have captured the moment of every amateur golfer’s dream.

On a brilliant afternoon on the last day of summer, traversing the beautiful but treacherous landscape of a championship course, Richardson and Myers were relaxed, kidding around as longtime buddies do and shooting under par.

If either had a concern at that moment, it was not about how they would play their next tee shots but that neither could recall exactly where and when they first met.

“Having a beer, probably,” said Richardson as he smashed a three-wood into the sun and out of sight until a tiny white dot appeared 30 feet to the right of the pin, about five feet closer than the white dot that belonged to Myers.

All they could say for sure was that they had seen each at other amateur tournaments off and on during the past decade and finally decided to play as a team in the Trans-Mississippi Assn. Four-Ball Championship tournament two years ago. Richardson, 44, of Laguna Niguel, and Myers, 45, of Oceanside, who play together maybe six times a year, were getting a jump on the competition for the 1990 event, which opens with a practice round at the Farms today.

Richardson and Myers have never won the Trans-Miss, a tournament that draws some of the best 25-and-older twosomes in the country and serves as the association’s primary fund raiser. Winning, they say, is not the reason they’ve put up the $600 fee to play this event. They just enjoy the competition and each other’s company.

But Richardson and Myers twice have finished second. This year they enter the three-round, 54-hole event Tuesday as the strongest bid for a local champion in a 10-year-old tournament that’s making its first stop in San Diego County.

“It’s not life or death, and we’re not trying to earn our living at it,” said Richardson, an investment broker. “But we like the competition, and that’s really how you find out if you’re good at anything.”

Twenty-two years ago, Richardson considered joining the PGA tour until he realized he didn’t like living out of a suitcase. In 1968, he was an All-American at USC. He proved last February that he hadn’t lost his touch when he shot a 68 during qualifying and beat out 138 other amateurs for a spot in the Shearson Lehman Hutton Open at Torrey Pines.

In competition, Richardson and Myers make an unlikely team. Myers is an Oceanside fire chief who only played golf competitively in at Oceanside High School. Richardson, whose father was a national senior amateur champion in 1987, the year before his death, played his first round of golf at age 6, but Myers didn’t touch clubs until he was 14. But the two seem to share a chemistry on the course that makes for success.

“I don’t remember Jim in college, I can say that,” Richardson said. “But he’s a very good player. We play well together.”

“As Kemp goes we go, pretty much,” Myers said. “He’s the dominant player.”

Myers gives all the credit to Richardson for the twosome’s opening-round 61 at Barton Creek Country Club in Austin, Tex., a year ago. They shot 11-under par to lead by eight strokes after 18 holes, then collapsed. They finished the tournament three shots back. In 1988, they were one stoke off the pace the entire tournament.

“We really should have won it last year,” Richardson conceded. “That was awful. You just have to play each hole the best you can. If your partner gets in deep doo-doo, you don’t want to get in deep doo-doo with him.”