Category Archives: Tournaments

BLBC 2022 Pairs Tournament, 10/22/2022

BLBC 2022 Pairs Culminates in Dramatic Final

The Club’s 2022 Pairs Tournament was held on Saturday, October 2022 and featured eight teams, first playing a series of three randomly-drawn 10-end games. The two top teams from that round went forward into a 10-end final. Teams had been formed by a random matching of Skips with Leads and had been handicapped based on the combined handicap of Skip and Lead. 

Only one team—Gary “Bing” Burns and Gordon Beveridge—emerged from the prelims with three wins, while three others had won two of their three matches. Of the latter, Chris Davis and Sarah Allday moved on to the final through having the best differential among the tied second place teams.

And what a final it was! A delight to the assembled spectators. Starting out with a net handicap in this matchup of +5 and taking three shots on the first end, Gary and Gordon looked in a formidable position. But Chris and Sarah were not giving in that easily and fought their way back into the match to tie it up at 9-9 on the eight end. Both teams were bowling really well, drawing continuous applause from the peanut gallery for shot after excellent shot, a particularly spectacular one being from Gary to slip in on the 9th end with his last bowl and take away Sarah’s point that was sitting less than two inches from the jack. The perfectly executed draw slowed as it drew in and curved just so to nestle an inch behind the jack. But the undaunted Davis/Allday team were not yet out and grabbed a single point on the 10th end to tie the game.

A 1-end bowl-off determined the winners. Chris and Sarah were now on a roll and put in great shots to win by three points and thereby emerge as 2022 Pairs Champions. 

Congratulations Chris and Sarah and thanks to all the participants for a fine day of bowling, to the hospitality crew of Sarah and Rolayn for vittles, and, as always, to our Greenskeeper Annie for what must currently be the fastest natural cover green in the PIMD.

– Report courtesy of Jim Corr

Rossmoor Challenge, 11/5/2022

The “Allende El Cerro” Trophy Goes to the Other Side of the Hill
They say “better late than never,” but when the news is not so good, maybe it’s not so good. Anyhoosies, with apologies for the delay to those of you not already aware, we lost the annual challenge match to Rossmoor LBC on Saturday, November 5.
We fielded six triples teams for a morning and afternoon game, but sadly only managed two wins on either side of lunch. Rumor has it that the Rossmoor folks were riled up by your humble correspondent holding up the trophy at announcements time, urging our hosts to take a good look, as some of them had never seen it before. (Berkeley had won the preceding four years in a row.) Lesson learned.
The trophy titled “Allende El Cerro” translates as “Over the Hill” to some people—a bit too close to the bone for me, with its whiff of an implication that lawn bowls is a sport for geezers. “On the other side of the hill” is a perfectly good alternative.
Riled or not, our Rossmoor colleagues were ever gracious and laid on a very nice lunch with hamburgers, veggie burgers, and hot links with all the fixings and then some, served up by grillmaster Ozzie Ozorio. We thank them and look forward to next year’s match-up here at home when we anticipate the trophy will return to this side of the hill!

– Report courtesy of Jim Corr

BLBC 2022 4-Bowl Singles

The 2022 4-Bowl Singles Tournament was a split affair, with the first stage being a round robin of four groups of three played over the course of September, and the winner of each game being the first to reach 16 points. The top two players in each group proceeded to the playoff round on Saturday, September 24.

Based on their performances in the round robin phase, the eight remaining contestants were seeded for the quarter-final round with 1 v 8, 2 v 7, and so on, resulting in a match up of Cris Benton v Phil Grattan, Sal Garcia-Lemus v Jim Corr, Rob Hoey v Cathy Dinnean, and Gary “Bing” Burns v Tom Birt. Those games, like the semis, were also played on the basis of first to reach 16 points. From the quarters, Phil, Jim, Rob, and Bing emerged to duke it out in the semis. The Jim v Bing match-up was close fought, tying at 12-12 before Bing gained one point on the 15th end, followed by a game-winning three on the next one. In the other semi, Phil led from the outset, and, while Rob sought valiantly to fight back, Phil ran out on top by 16-6.

The final was set up on the classic format of first to 21 points for singles events. Phil once again dominated. But Bing was determined to make it a real contest and came back from what could have been a spirit-sapping position of down 18-1 after seven ends to bring it to 19-12 by the 15th. However, with a couple of 1-pointers on the next two ends, Phil showed his determination not to let victory slip from his grasp and prevailed as the 2022 4-Bowl Singles Champion.

Congratulations to Phil and thanks to all who took part in the event including the early contenders. As always thanks to our hospitality crew for sustenance and to our greenskeeper for the quality of the green.

PIMD 2022 Singles, 7/9/2022, 7/16/2022

PIMD 2022 Singles—Dual Venue Tests the Field

The PIMD Singles Tournament was held over two Saturdays (July 9 and July 16) at two clubs: first, at San Francisco LBC, followed by the final rounds at Berkeley.

Twenty-four competitors, both men and women, started out at SF, and after three matches played to 16 points, a top 12 emerged, three players having three wins: Chris Davies (Berkeley), Jim Corr (Berkeley) and Scottie Marzonie (Palo Alto,) and nine having a record of two wins, one loss.

On the succeeding Saturday, with all games played to 18 points, the top six bowlers from the SF rounds were first randomly matched against the bottom six. The two later rounds were played on a “winner v winner” basis. After two matches, the final contests were set with Jim Corr facing Andrew Keeler (San Francisco) for top spot and Jesse May (Santa Cruz) against Chris Davies at that point in third and fourth place. In the Corr-Keeler matchup, Andrew jumped into an early lead to go up 10-3 at one point, but, mainly through getting hold of the jack more often, Jim managed to switch play to a short jack game and dominated the second half. Four points for Jim on the 16th end tied the game at 15-15, and in the next end he took another three to snatch victory and the 2022 Singles title.

The other top match was equally hard fought, with Jesse overcoming Chris by 18-14, which vaulted Jess to second place overall in the standings. Andrew finished third, edging out Aumao To’alepaialii (Santa Cruz) by a single differential point over the three matches of the day.

Congratulations to all who were “in the money” (a total of eight players) and thanks, as always, to PIMD Tournament Director Bud Birkenseer for the hours he put in to overseeing the tourney. And a big shout out to the Berkeley hospitality crew as well as to newly (re)-appointed greenskeeper, Annie Brillhart for producing a fine playing surface at short notice.

BLBC Fives Tournament in SF, 6/25/2022

Two teams represented BLBC at the Fives tournament in San Francisco on June 25. Bernie, Tom, Joseph, Sarah and Sal composed one team. The other team, the Gimels, included Ginger and Ian Harris from Palo Alto, Mo, Ethan and Leslie. They succeeded in taking third place. It was a beautiful cool day in Golden Gate Park.

With thanks to Leslie Engler for the write-up and Bernadette Chan for the photos.

BLBC at the 2022 Aussie Pairs

Here is the Aussie Pairs Report with photographs credited to Jeff Schaper.
Bowlers: 

This year’s PIMD Aussie Pairs[1]  Tournament was held at Rossmoor LBC on Saturday April 23, with a full field of 84 hopefuls forming 42 teams on Rossmoor’s three beautiful rinks. A fun variation on the standard pairs format, the Aussie game tends to favor teams that show strength in both positions, allowing the traditional Lead to demonstrate their “skip shots” and testing the usual Skip player on the value of strong opening play. As usual for this event, a strong contingent of Berkeley bowlers was among the competitors. The BLBC players also turned out to be prominent among the winners. 

After the day’s three 10-end games, at the top of the list was Jim Corr, bowling with Micheal McClintock (Santa Clara) in resplendent “Jackson Pollok” shirts. Berkeley dual member, Ian Cameron with partner Tom Burnoski (San Jose) took 4th place, while in 6th and 7th place respectively were the Berkeley duos of Nick Christensen/Daniel Gorelick and Leslie Engler/Sara Allday (the highest placed all-women team). Prize money went down to the 14th position, which was held by Glenn Nunez and Liz Halton (San Francisco) who gallantly stepped up at the last moment to fill in for Berkeley’s Phil Grattan who had to drop out due to illness.

A long day of bowls—but, as always, better than a short day at the office. Congratulations to all the BLBC winning players!

[1] Australian, or more informally, Aussie Pairs is a bowls format that allows both team members to alternate between bowling as Skip and Lead. Sometimes referred to as “2-4-2 bowls,” it encompasses one team member bowling two bowls, followed by the other bowling  four, and finally the first team member playing his or her remaining two bowls. Team members then reverse their positions.

2022 PIMD Aussie Pairs Winners: Jim Corr (r) and Micheal McClintock (l)
2022 PIMD Aussie Pairs 4th Place: Ian Cameron (r) and Tom Burnoski (l)
2022 PIMD Aussie Pairs 6th Place: Leslie Engler (r) and Sarah Allday (l)
2022 PIMD Aussie Pairs 7th Place: Daniel Gorelick and [missing] Nick Christensen
2022 PIMD Aussie Pairs 14th Place: Glenn Nunez and Liz Halton