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.
