Ancient Sport Still Rolling in Paradise

The first time Norm Bender tried lawn bowling, he was escorted onto the greens by a player well into his 80s. The old-timer inquired about Bender’s age.

“I told him I was 65,” Bender recalled. “He said, ‘That’s great, we need some young blood at this club.’ I thought he was kidding.”

The hilarious part is, he wasn’t. Bender--now 71 and still bowling--laughed at the memory. He has come to realize what many bowlers hate to acknowledge: that the sport he loves is embraced mainly by the pre-World War II crowd, those who grew up watching Rocky Marciano and Ed Sullivan.

When their creaky knees and bad shoulders no longer tolerate the strains of weekend basketball, or tennis, or even golf, they shuffle out onto the last of life’s playing fields.

In Laguna Beach, that final sporting theater is appropriately grand. Two immaculate square bowling greens, each 120 feet across, occupy a bluff above a rocky beach--prime view property that would never be set aside for the purpose today. Steep hills tumble in from the east. The westward tilt of the coast, and the thick banks of trees, succulents and ice plant rimming the bluffs, make the flatness and symmetry of the greens all the more stunning.

Trails skirt the low cliffs, traveled by tourists who pause at the lawn-bowling gates, stare curiously for a few moments, and move along. Breezy afternoons fade into red sunsets.

“The seagulls and pelicans are swooping over, the palm trees are swaying, and the sea is crashing,” said Murray D. Brown, 71, who bowls here regularly, his face shaded by a straw hat, one spindly knee secured by a brace. “I don’t think there’s a more beautiful setting in California for this.”

That seems to be a consensus. Though greens are still scattered across California--bowlers compete in Beverly Hills, Long Beach, Pasadena and other cities--the arena in Laguna offers the most compelling union of sport and place.

Located in city-owned Heisler Park, the bowling area is about as old as Brown. A real estate man named Harlan S. Kittle, who had moved to Laguna Beach from Beverly Hills, decided there was a need and, in 1931, organized the Laguna Beach Lawn Bowling Club.

By fall of that year, the first green was built. The second green was added in 1951 and a tiny clubhouse in 1973. The nonprofit club still runs the place and is planning its 70th anniversary celebration for mid-November. The rolls now list 143 members, some of them among the best lawn bowlers in America. They pay yearly dues of $75 apiece. A member can bowl all day for $1.

Despite those bargain-basement rates, the club struggles to attract younger participants. “Members range in age from 29 to over 100,” according to a club news release, but there are times, especially on weekdays, when it’s tough to find anyone under 50.

Hank Handy doesn’t bowl any more. Bender remembers watching Handy a few years ago, an inspiring sight because of the energy he had, the way he moved. Bender had heard that Handy was 92, a fact he mentioned one day to a bystander. “The guy said, ‘He’s not 92--he’s 97,’ ” Bender recalled. “It just blew my mind.”

Handy gave up the game while continuing to serve as a Meals On Wheels volunteer, said club President Heather Stewart, 53. Other players simply die off. “I think last year we lost two,” Stewart said.

Stewart’s husband, Jerry, 56, calls lawn bowling “the secret sport.” What accounts for its obscurity, he isn’t sure, but young people seem to prefer surfing and basketball. Lawn bowling is confusing to watch, plus it’s a British sport. “It fell out of favor,” he said, “after the Revolutionary War.”

There may be 6,000 lawn bowlers in all of the United States. The sport combines the elegance of dressage with the tactical complexity of chess and billiards.

Dr. Harvey C. Maxwell, a former president of the Laguna club, wrote “The American Lawn Bowler’s Guide,” a 200-page handbook published in 1966. In it, Maxwell offered instruction, training exercises and traced the roots of the pastime to stone implements from 5000 BC.

“The actual origin of the game is hidden in the haze of antiquity,” he wrote. “Sculptured vases and ancient plaques show the game being played 4,000 years ago.”

The game resembles the Olympic ice sport of curling. Players, competing as individuals or teams, begin by rolling a small white ball, a “jack,” to the opposite side of the green. The object, then, is to get closest to the jack with larger balls, known as “bowls.” Part of the strategy is to knock the opponent’s bowls out of the way. Complicating the action is the fact that the three-pound bowls do not roll straight. They are manufactured with varying degrees of “bias”--they’re lopsided--and will veer to the left or right, depending on which way you hold them.

Releasing the bowl properly demands the precision of a golf stroke. Nationally ranked Mert Hill, 54, cited the technical and strategic nuances of bowling and said, “You’re not considered to know the game until you’ve played 10 years.”

“Americans have a hard time, I think, because of the patience [it requires],” said Simon Meyerowitz, 64, another top player. “You can’t rush it. If you lose your cool, you’ve had it.”

Meyerowitz’s days as a tournament tennis player are long gone. He is hobbled by hip-replacement surgery. Bowling now consumes him.

He can recite much of its history--that George Washington maintained a green at Mount Vernon, that Sir Francis Drake took on Sir Walter Raleigh. Supposedly, they were deep in a close contest when the Spanish armada was spotted off the English coast in 1588. No one recorded who won, but it’s said Drake insisted on completing the game before battle.

“You can’t think of work and do this at the same time.” Meyerowitz said. “Once you’re on the green, you’ve got to be focused.”

Players from throughout the world come to Laguna Beach for tournaments, but also for the ocean air, the view, the sounds of the surf. That some of the competitors are getting up in years doesn’t make them any easier to beat. As Jerry Stewart pointed out, “It’s a very easy game to learn, but it takes a lifetime to master.”

Murray Brown shook his head as he stood out on the greens one sunny morning, flanked by two dozen other players in their white shorts and caps.

“There’s a man here who’s 86--Grant Valentine. I’ve only beaten him once,” Brown said. A former golfer and senior discus thrower, Brown admits to a competitive nature. He has been lawn bowling for six years after retiring as a speech pathologist.

“The thing that humbles you,” he said, “is when an 80-year-old woman out-bowls you. You go home with your tail between your legs.”

He laughed. “We do need young blood here.”

“People in their 60s?” someone asked.

“Oh, yeah.”