Lawn Bowlers Are a Retiring Sort, Who Take the Game Seriously : Sport Keeps Rolling Along, Hoping to Draw New Blood

Old?

Francis Drake, William Shakespeare and George Washington were lawn bowlers, and they weren’t old . . . yeah, they’re old now, but like current players in British Commonwealth nations, they took up the sport when they were young.

England, New Zealand and Australia produce some of the world’s best bowlers, and the world’s best bowlers started producing when they’re knee high to a “jack” (hip lawn bowling term).

And speaking of hips, be sure to keep ‘em down on that follow through. But enough technique for now, we were talking about the age gap in American lawn bowling.

OK, do you have to be old to lawn bowl?

No.

OK, what’s the average age of an American lawn bowler?

Old.

Why?

Because from sea to shining sea, lawn bowling is considered one of the pendants of retirement. There are nine lawn bowling clubs in Orange County and their membership is largely retired. Older people are drawn to the sport by the mild exercise it offers.

The recommended bowling technique requires bending and stretching (keep those hips low) while holding a a three- to four-pound object. It also requires walking up and back on the grass playing field. In a 14-end game--an end is one time up and back--a player will walk more than a mile.

While this might appeal to those in their golden years, it has yet to strike the fancy of the younger generation.

“We’d love to have the young kids come and play,” said Bob Hicks of the Newport Harbor Lawn Bowling Club. “But I don’t think they want to come and be with us. They think of this as an old man’s game.”

Is this warranted? The players believe the game’s entire problem stems from its perception as the sport of the elderly.

Here’s the game:

A small white ball that looks very much like a cue ball, is placed at one end of a grass playing field, called a rink. Players attempt to roll their bowls (not balls, but bowls) closest to the ball. Whoever is closest to the white ball (not bowl, but ball), called a jack, gets a point and an additional point for each bowl that is closer to the jack than the nearest bowl of their opponent.

Rocket science this isn’t.

That is until you consider the strategy. Bowls are not round, but oblong. They do not roll straight because one side of the bowl has a weight in it called a bias. Whichever side the bias is on, the bowl will hook that way when rolled.

Knowing that, players attempt to block opponents by laying shots short. They try to fade shots in, or blast opponents or the jack, out. There are thousand of things that can be done every turn, which still doesn’t make this rocket science but does make it a little like a rolling game of chess.

“The fact that you have to stop the bowl separates this from a lot of games,” said Jerry LaPask, 75, a member of the Laguna Beach Lawn Bowling Club. “You’re not just chucking away, you’re placing your shots strategically, and reacting to whatever your opponent decides to do. You have to constantly think?”

Think? Anybody seen my running shoes?

OK, it’s got strategy, but, admittedly, the game is rather slow. Of course, golf isn’t exactly played at a hyperspace speed and there’s a steady stream of kids beating a path to the links.

Remy Hudson, 88, is director of the Marcellus L. Joslyn Foundation, an organization that has given millions for senior citizens’ projects, including more than $2 million toward lawn bowling (lawn care and maintenance, clubhouse construction).

He has been a bowler since the late 1950s, when he not only bowled with Joslyn--who made a fortune by manufacturing cross ties for telephone poles around the turn of the century--but with Walt Disney, who helped found the Beverly Hills Bowling Club. (Incidentally, bowlers say that in Disney’s City of Tomorrow, the various green blocks throughout that model of the city of the future were actually bowling greens.)

Hudson believes the future of bowling depends on drawing the younger generation in, not just kids, but people in their 30s and 40s. He has proposed offering free lessons to anyone who wants to learn.

“I’ve seen golf courses that offer free lessons once a week during the summer,” he said. “We’ve got to start attracting those people. We’ve got to educate people that this isn’t a game just for the old.”

Actually, free lessons can be had at almost any club in Orange County. Most don’t even require that a person call for a reservation.

“If someone’s walking by and is interested, we’ll give ‘em a set of bowls and a lesson right then,” said Max Bartosh of the Newport Harbor Club.

Players say the game is easy to pick up.

“In three or four lessons, a young person can pick up just about everything they need to know,” said LaPask, who teaches the game at Laguna Beach. “From then on, they just have to develop on their own.”

Problem is, though a lot of people stop to watch--the sight of dress whites against the green grass seems irresistible to the human eye--few are interested in learning, let alone developing.

“Well, think about what they see when they look out on a green (the 120-foot by 120-foot square playing field that holds eight rinks),” said Ferrell Burton Jr., editor of Bowls Magazine. “They see a bunch of old (people) milling about. They don’t want to be with us, and to tell the truth I don’t want to be with them. I think any young kid who wants to be out here is maladjusted.”

Burton, a retired Air Force colonel (Who would have guessed?), is in the minority with his opinions. The majority believes a possible problem is coming if the sport doesn’t attract the younger players. The sport could die out.

Dorothy Henry, 56, a member of the Laguna Beach club who will be one of four women to represent the U.S. in an international tournament in Australia, believes there’s a real possibility of extinction.

“I think if we don’t attract the younger people, we’ll not only stand still, but we might regress,” she said.

According to Burton, there are about 10,000 bowlers in America. Most are elderly. In its regional roundups the quarterly Bowls Magazine prints the names of club members who have died. Frankly, there are a lot of them. A club in St. Petersburg, Fla., had seven members listed.

“We get a ton of them every issue,” Burton said. “That shouldn’t be surprising. Old people play the sport; old people die. That’s just the way things are. But I don’t think the sport will die out with the people. There will always be that age of retiree looking for something to do. I think the sport will always remain with around the same participation.”

Henry picked up the sport rather young, by American standards. She was 36 and living in New York when she started.

“I was working in the garment district and bowling offered me a way to unwind,” she said. “I fell in love with it immediately.”

Henry started by playing in New York’s Central Park and joined the Laguna Beach club after moving to Laguna Hills. She has developed into one of the nation’s best and last weekend was chosen to represent the U.S. in Australia.

Lawn bowling is huge in Australia, estimates are that more than 400,000 people play there. Players say it isn’t unusual to have waiting lists of up to two years to join some clubs.

The week-long tournament that Henry will compete in is expected to draw close to 5,000 spectators each day.

In Australia, as well as England and New Zealand, players begin as children. Sir Francis Drake was an avid bowler. Legend has it that as the Spanish Armada neared the English coast, Drake refused to leave a bowling green until his game was over.

Shakespeare mentions bowling in Richard II, and Washington started playing as a young boy on the green his father built at Mount Vernon in 1732.

“The game is ingrained in the British mind,” said Michael Ashton-Phillips, a Englishman who lives in the Hollywood Hills and bowls at the Beverly Hills club.

The American Lawn Bowls Assn. Almanac theorizes that the reason the sport did not continue to prosper in America as it did in other former British holdings, is that anti-British feelings ran so high after the War for Independence that anything with a British taste was frowned upon.

Players from British Commonwealth nations dominate the bowling scene. The recognized Babe Ruth of this era has been England’s David Bryant, who has won three world championships--world championships are held once every four years--and has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

Consider that it took 12 years to win three championships and consider that Bryant is in his 40s, a veritable pup by U.S. bowling standards, and you get an idea about where America stands against the rest of the world.

“There’s about 25 nations playing the game, and America ranks about 24th,” Ashton-Phillips said. “The Americans just haven’t tapped the resources they have here. If they want to compete with the world they have to get the young people involved.”

You heard it here first.