The 4-3-2-1 Tournament format remains relatively new to Berkeley, this being only the second year it has been held. It may be related to “The Belgrano” devised in tribute to General Manuel Belgrano, an Argentinian military hero and Founding Father who has many sites, streets, and institutions named after him in his native country, including the Belgrano Athletic Club, home to Argentina’s first and largest lawn bowling club (situated unsurprisingly in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires). It is speculated

that Argentina originated this variation on the more casual “Cutthroat” game of bowls involving involves three players. The 4-3-2-1, in contrast, is a Singles game, but follows Cutthroat scoring—the closest bowl to the jack, irrespective of whose it is, gets 4 points, the second-closest 3 points, the third bowl 2 points and the fourth a single point. Thus, in principle a total of 10 points is available to either player in a given end.

Consistency is the key goal of any lawn bowler and consistency pays off particularly in this format—make sure you get something out of each end and don’t give up too many 9 or 10-pointers. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself deep in the hole after only a few ends, even with first to 65 points being the decisive goal.

This year, the BLBC tournament was held on Saturday, February 28 under fine bowling conditions. Following a preliminary set of matches held over the preceding three weeks, 12 players qualified for the final day’s contest. They faced each other in a modified version of strength-to-strength play in which the stronger players after each round went up against bowlers lower in the rankings with the field tighteningafter each round.

By Round 4, only two players—Daniel Gorelick and Jim Corr—had won all three preceding match-ups: Daniel against Russell (Rolly) Coe, Cris Benton, and Mike O’Leary, while Jim had prevailed against Michael Leutzinger, Tom Birt, and Sarah Allday. The final was keenly contested. Jim built up a small but significant lead early on, playing his short jack game. But when he got an opportunity, Daniel began closing the spread with a T-to-T strategy, so that after 10-ends the gap had been closed to only 4 points, 52-48 in Jim’s favor. Over the next three ends they split the points 15 apiece resulting in a razor-thin 67- v63 victory for Jim.

Congratulations to Jim on his success in the first club tournament of the BLBC 2026 calendar, and thanks to all participants, the greenskeeping team, the hospitality folks, not to mention the always welcome markers who made the games flow smoothly.