SPOTLIGHT : This Bowling Has Grass-Roots Appeal

Margaret Moffat presses her knees together and bends forward, her right arm swinging like a pendulum inches above the manicured grass. She cradles the 3-pound, elliptical-shaped bowl, then rolls it 75 feet across a lawn bowling green that’s as hard and flat as a billiard table.

Moffat’s bowl stops short of her target, a cue-ball-sized jack at the opposite end of the 120-foot square green. She releases another bowl, still in pursuit of her first elusive toucher, a scoring roll where the bowl touches the jack.

For Moffat, the conditions are right for a perfect afternoon of lawn bowling--the green is hard and her husband John is on the opposing team. The match is all the more important because it marks her return after a two-month illness.

“When I began to feel better, right away I wanted to get out and play,” she said.

Up to three times a week, Moffat commutes to the Holmby Park Lawn Bowling Club in Los Angeles from her North Hollywood home. She’s usually joined by a group of neighbors who have three things in common--the same apartment complex, lineage (Scottish), and love for the centuries-old sport.

Fifteen lawn bowlers, nine of whom are Scottish, live at the Heatherdale Homes in North Hollywood. At 72, Moffat is the youngster in the group that includes 81-year-old James Gatherer, Bill McQueen, 82, and her husband of 44 years, John, 78.

Lawn bowling, which originated in Europe, is a point-scoring game played on a 120-foot square green. A green is divided into eight rinks that allow 16 teams, made up of one to four players, to compete simultaneously.

In lawn bowling, these native Scots have found a competitive sport they can play indefinitely. They can play as long as they can still bend over to roll a bowl.

“I can still get down pretty good,” Moffat said. “That’s a problem with some of the men, they don’t get down as well.”

Fellow lawn bowler and neighbor Tom Emerson can attest to Moffat’s comments.

“When you get a lot of arthritis, your knees don’t give,” Emerson said. “But lawn bowling takes some stamina. It’s amazing how some of the older people keep up.”

The Heatherdale residents compete at Holmby Park, the only lawn bowling club in Los Angeles, because it’s accessible and affordable. Club members’ expenses are limited to $50 annual dues and the cost of bleach to keep the traditional white playing outfits clean.

These Valley-based lawn bowlers are part of an estimated 5,000 who compete nationwide, 40% of whom live in Southern California. The majority of the Heatherdale residents have bowled for more than 10 years. There are unique cases, however, such as Gatherer, who played in the 1930s, gave it up for 50 years, then took it up again five years ago along with his second wife, Ella.

“The trouble with the game is that most people think it’s an old man’s game because there are not a lot of young people involved,” McQueen said. “In Britain it’s a young people’s game. They start playing at 9 and up.”

Ferrell Burton, Jr., editor of Bowls magazine, the official magazine of the American Lawn Bowls Assn., seconds McQueen’s assertion that lawn bowling is for all ages.

“It’s not necessarily an old man’s game,” Burton said. “It’s just a game that old men can play.”

McQueen took up the sport in his 60s because his doctor promised him it would increase his life span by 10 years. He has gotten 20 years out of the bargain.

“There are competitive bowlers and social bowlers and I’m a social bowler,” McQueen said. “But there are some people who even though it’s a social game take it very seriously. And you get some women who are too busy socializing to play the game.”

For McQueen, lawn bowling provides a better opportunity to socialize than such sports as golf or tennis because of its blind-draw system of picking teams. McQueen can compete in singles or doubles play or be on teams of three to four players.

“Sixty-four can play on a green at one time. That tends to make it a very social game,” McQueen said.

The sport is appealing to Moffat for at least two reasons--she can compete against her husband and men have no edge over women in lawn bowling.

“Women can be just as good as the men in this sport,” she said. “I don’t like playing with my husband, but if I have to, it’s OK.”

Despite having such senior representatives as McQueen and Gatherer, the Heatherdale group has a long way to go to qualify for the distinction of having the oldest player at the club. That honor goes to a 97-year-old club member from Los Angeles.

None of the Scottish lawn bowlers plan to give up in their quest for the distinction, however.

“Not until we drop or are carried off the field,” McQueen said.