Taking Their Best Shot : Laguna Hills Rolls Out the Green Carpet for Lawn Bowling

Like people of a gentler age, the long line of lawn bowlers in crisp whites with blue blazers marched solemnly Friday across the green behind a Scottish piper and the U.S. Marine color guard.

When it came time to roll the first ball, Tom Holness did his best.

“I got the right line, but I didn’t get the right weight,” he said later, describing the shot that missed its mark by a couple of feet. Translation: His aim was OK, but the strength of his swing wasn’t.

Thus began at the Laguna Hills Lawn Bowls Club the 1995 U.S. National Open Lawn Bowling Tournament, the largest gathering in America of players of the sport they call bowls.

“It’s great to be here, and it’s great to have all these flags flying,” Holness, president of the World Bowling Board, told the hushed and dignified crowd gathered at Leisure World for ceremonies marking the opening of the six-day event.

This year’s tournament, to be played at 11 sites throughout Orange County and Long Beach, has attracted 410 participants from across the United States, as well as Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Scotland, England, Wales, Spain and Israel.

“You can travel the world and it’s like a brother/sisterhood,” said Michael Ashton-Phillips, marketing director for the American Lawn Bowling Assn. and the tournament’s organizer. “How else can you come out with a little bag of balls and wile away two hours?”

People have been doing just that for hundreds of years.

The game, which involves rolling a 3-pound, 10-ounce ball as close as possible to a smaller white ball, was first popularized in England during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Banned in 1650 because it then included betting, the sport resurfaced in Scotland in the mid-19th Century. Scottish immigrants brought it to the United States 79 years ago, and it now has about 20,000 participants here, Ashton-Phillips said.

While most American lawn bowlers are in their 60s or older, he said, European champions of the sport tend to be in their 20s or 30s. In England, Australia and New Zealand, the games are regularly televised and top bowlers can turn pro.

Edwin Waterston, a 51-year-old native of Scotland now living in Vancouver, Canada, said he started playing the game with his father at the age of 5.

“It’s a way of life in Scotland,” said Waterston, who won division championships at the last two national tournaments and expects to win one again. “I was brought up in bowling.”

Two other Canadian bowlers said they took up the sport four years ago while barely out of their 20s.

“It’s considered a seniors sport,” said Harry Rihela, 34, “but on the green it doesn’t make any difference. We’ve made friends who are 40 years older.”

Added his wife, Terri, 33, “It’s a sport you can grow old with.”

Jack Stuck, a member of the Laguna Hills Lawn Bowls Club, said he started playing only six years ago, when he was 65.

“It gets you out, gets you meeting nice people and gives you something to do,” he said. “I’d say it’s one of the best factors of my life.”

Erica Sayre, a Leisure World resident, said that lawn bowling “is a beautiful sport . . . every game is different.”

And her husband, Milt, said lawn bowling is “something we can do together. There’s lots of camaraderie.”

None of which surprises Holness, who at 74 has been playing the game for 46 years.

“Bowls is universal,” he said. “Bowls is here for you to enjoy.”