Category Archives: Club Members

Membership has its privileges

Club Members, Volunteer Work

Well Tended

 Thursday morning bowling and gardening group is hard at work whipping the garden surrounding the lawn bowling green into shape.

Leslie and Sarah vs. the weeds

The Gardening Committee meets on Thursday morning at 10:00 am for bowling and then gardening.  Our fearless leader and chair, Leslie Engler directs our weekly projects.  Last week Leslie and Sarah Allday worked on oxalis removal in one of our flower beds to allow breathing and growing room for the plants.  It is, it seems, a never-ending fight with the oxalis. Meanwhile, Donna Otten and Susan Jamart worked on deadheading the daises.  Charlie McFarran mowed the grass surrounding the green.  Ben Steinberg weed-whacked the edge of the sidewalk while his father-in-law, John enjoyed the sunshine and watching the lawn bowling game.  Patricia Erwin, one of our awesome greenkeepers, and Phil Watson worked on getting ready for our semiannual workday by prefilling buckets with sand.  Claudia Benton worked on cleaning the ditch surround the green getting ready for the Two Bowl Single tournament on March 8.  

It is a lovely time of year to garden. Spring is fast approaching and the oxalis is in full bloom. The roses have been pruned and waiting for new buds.  Flowers and shrubs need deadheading and are beginning to sprout new growth. The English ivy vigorously grows year-round on the fences surrounding the lawn bowling club and is frequently in need of pruning. The grass surrounding the bowling green is green and growing with our warm sunny days and rain.

There is a long list of gardening projects for the gardening group to attack.  The Gardening Committee welcomes anyone and everyone on Thursday mornings at 10am for a fun morning of bowling and gardening.  Hope to see you there.

Deep in the weeds, our Acton Street sidewalk c. 2018

As a quick reminder of how valuable this landscape gardening group is, take a look at our Acton Street sidewalk back in the days when jungle conditions prevailed. (2018).

Club Members, Special Events, Volunteer Work

Green Maintenance soon

We approach the Ides of March and that means it is time to lavish even more attention on our lovely green.

Work day on Sunday, 23 March, 2025

The Greenskeepers need your help with tining, plug removal and sand application/removal, among other tasks. There are also some light duty tasks in addition to those that are outlined below.  For newer members, this is a great opportunity to learn more about how our green is maintained and to meet other members you may not know.

We will be providing pizza and light snacks for those who volunteer, please let us know if you will join for that.  

Below is an outline of main tasks and timing.  We hope to be done by early afternoon and can use your help even if for a short period of time.

Starting around 8:30 we need 6 volunteers to shovel the plugs from Jose’s tining into wheelbarrows.

View of tining plugs, numbering over 200,000, being swept up for removal.

Starting around 10:00 we need 4-8 volunteers to shovel sand into wheelbarrows and then use buckets to dump the sand into the mechanical spreader. The larger number of volunteers would allow for breaks. 

Starting around 10:30 we need 2-4 volunteers to sweep sand into the plug holes along edges and corners only. Jose will use the tractor with a broom/mat to sweep the sand from most of the green.

The club has most of the equipment, but we could use snow-type shovels and sturdy dollies. Please bring them along if you have those.

Spreading sand to fill the holes created by tining.

We do have some work/gardening gloves, but please bring your own if you have those. 

Please reply to this email by Sunday March 9 to let us know that you can join and what time slot, or to let us know any questions.

Following the workday the green will be closed for approximately one month for continued maintenance.

Club Members, Club Projects

The Green is Surrounded

The asphalt surround is an integral part of the bowling green. In addition to providing safe access around the green, it also contains embedded root guards on the south and west sides of the green. This asphalt surround was installed decades ago with help from the City of Berkeley (CoB). Over the years, the paving had deteriorated significantly due to uplifting of the pavement by tree roots, which created tripping hazard, and natural degradation of the surface asphalt.

Tidying up the patched sidewalk with a finish coat.

We considered three options to restore the surround:

1. Add 3 inches of new asphalt on top of the existing surface;

2. Remove 3 to 4 inches of asphalt and repave; and

3. Remove the uplifted part, patch cracks, and seal the surface with latex-based top coat.

Options 1 and 2 were impractical and prohibitively expensive, so we chose Option 3. The pavement is restored to a safe and beautiful walking surface and, hopefully, will continue to serve us well with regular maintenance.

The newly refinished surround looking mighty fine.

Club Members

First 4th at Four

On Sunday February 23, 2025 the Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club held the first ever Fourth at Four.  The Fourth at Four is designed to provide indoor games, and enjoy our great clubhouse at 4 PM on the fourth Sunday of the month

About 15 fun seekers showed up to play games, enjoy tasty snacks, a glass of wine and enjoy each other’s company.  The games were varied including pool, darts, Dominos, poker and the most fun game of all Crokinole.  If you have never played or even heard of Crokinole, join us for the April Fourth at Four on April 27, at 4 PM.  A great time was had by all.

The Fourth at Four for March is cancelled due the biannual BLBC workday, drilling, sanding and seeding the green.

Club Members, Tournaments

4-3-2-1 Tournament (2025)

Saturday, February 22, was, as the old folk song says, “a fair and a pleasant day,” but instead of us sailing out of Yarmouth harbor, the bowls were sailing, mostly gently, down the green as ten of Berkeley’s best competed in this year’s 4-3-2-1 Tournament.

Only in its second year for Berkeley, the 4-3-2-1 format is akin to “cutthroat” in that each of the four bowls nearest the jack is a scoring bowl, with the shot bowl awarded four points, the second bowl three points, and so on. With 10 points available on every end, scores can run up pretty fast to the target of 65 points. 

As with many of our tournaments now, when demand exceeds the available supply of seven reasonably playable rinks, we held a preliminary stage in which 20 players were divided into five round robin groups of four. The top two players in each group made up the 10 finalists, consisting of: Tom Birt, Luis Zapata, Daniel Gorelick, Bing Burns, Andrew Keeler, Hugo Deaux, Mike Armstrong, Phil Grattan, Cris Benton, and Des Simpson.

A random draw determined the first round of a strength v strength format for the finals. Based on the first games’ results, the top five were, in order, Cris, Phil, Andrew, Daniel, and Louis. A second round left three players with two wins and no losses (Cris, Luis, and Andrew, and four on one win, one loss (Mike, Hugo, Phil, and Daniel). By the time round three was complete, only two players—Cris and Andrew had won all three of their games and they faced off in a fine bowling final. Andrew jumped into an early lead of 20-10 after three ends. But Cris had ably demonstrated his Comeback Kid skills in his preceding match against Luis, turning a deficit of 18 points at one stage into a win by 12. With steady bowling and many shots that drew “oohs” and applause from the gallery (to which Andrew added a good share, too, never getting out of sight) he drew level, pulled ahead, and maintained course to emerge victorious by 65-55.

Congratulations to Cris and thanks to our ever-wonderful hospitality team as well as to our great greenskeepers!

Club Members

Club Lifters

Embarrassed by the sorry state of the old lifters floating around the club, I made a new set of club lifters. These have three sizes: short (yellow), medium (red), and tall (blue). The intent is that these lifters stay at the club for use by anyone who needs a lifter.

Club lifters
Club Members, Rental Events, Tournaments

HC Yung is BLBC 2024 2-Bowl Singles Champ, 5/11/2024

Jim Corr to BLBC Bowlers on 5/12/2024:

The final rounds of BLBC’s 2024 2-Bowl Singles Tournament were held on Saturday, May 11 amid lovely bowling weather. HC Yung, our dual member from the Kowloon Green Bowling Club (Hong Kong), emerged as champion after a show of steady, steady bowling over the three games.

The tournament started with four groups containing four players who played in round robin format with the top two from each group qualifying for the final day’s play. They were—in order of seeding—Cris Benton, Daniel Gorelick, Hugo Deaux, HC Yung, Gary “Bing” Burns, Tom Birt, Kevin Reynolds, and Jim Audas.

In the opening quarter final play, HC, drawn against Bing, jumped into an early lead, up 11-4 at one stage in the first-to-15-points game. But Bing fought back eventually edging in front 13-12. However, HC recovered his form on the next two ends to claim first one, then two points thus coming out on top 15-13. Meanwhile, on the other side of the green Hugo was winning his match against Tom with relative ease in a 15-7 victory. In the other two quarter-finals, Daniel beat Kevin 15-11 and Cris won 15-10 against Jim.

The semifinals saw Hugo in an early back-and-forth against Daniel, the score tied 5-5 after six ends. Daniel kept up the pressure to hold the game to 11-10 in Hugo’s favor on the thirteenth end. But three winning ends brought Hugo through to the final with a 15-10 victory. In the other semi, HC and Cris fought a ding-dong battle, each enjoying mini “streaks” and the score tied on a couple of occasions through the first sixteen ends. The game was still anyone’s on the 22nd end at 14-13for HC, but he got the necessary decisive point on the next end to win 15-13.

In the final, played to 18 points, HC turned on a show with one fine shot after another to run up a dominating lead of 15-3. But Hugo was not letting go quite that easily and with several winning ends battled back to put an additional eight points on the board before HC recovered and took the game—and the championship—to an 18-11 victory.

Congratulations to HC and thanks to all the bowlers who put on a fine display for the spectators. Also, thanks to Daniel for a well-organized tournament from start to finish, to Sarah Allday and Susan Jamart for supplying the vittles, and, as always, to our greenskeepers for providing a beautiful-to-the-eye and beautifully-running green.

HC Yung, Winner (right), and Hugo Deaux, Runner Up (left), BLBC 20204 2-Bowl Singles

Club Members

Congratulations, Daniel!

BLBC Pres. Ashok Verma to BLBCers on 4/16/2024:

Please join me in congratulating Daniel Gorelick for being selected to represent the USA in a four-country tournament in Ayr, Scotland in August 2024. Other countries are Canada, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

If interested, you could find the details in the April 2024 Bowles Bulletin of BUSA

Club Members, PIMD, Tournaments

PIMD Mixed Pairs

From Bud Birkenseer, PIMD Tournament Director on 4/15/2024:

Congratulations to Bernadette and HC for winning the PIMD mixed pairs!

 What a journey, rain, wind, the party’s ON the party is OFF. The wind stopped then blew again, but the games went ON.

 Thanks everyone, I appreciate that you ALL made it to the Club and ON TIME.

 I saw some very nice shots made over the day. Very impressive considering most of you couldn’t feel your fingers.

 Congrats to our Champions!  

HC Yung and Bernadette Chan who went undefeated and had a differential of 19 points

The runners up John and Angie Peet also went undefeated, but their differential missed the mark by a few points. 

Four teams won money, and we had an added donation to the prize pool! Thank you to our unnamed donor.

I am sure the winners will find a way to spend that extra cash. 

I just don’t want our PIMD bowlers to expect these large prize money amounts in ALL our PIMD tournaments!! 

(Thank you mystery donor!)

Club Members, Special Events

BLBC February Follies

Glenn Nunez to BLBCers on 3/30/2024:

It was pointed out to me recently that I’ve been remiss in sharing the results of the recently-completed BLBC February Follies with our Club members. Mea culpa.

This experimental league event turned out to be aptly named, as the folly of scheduling anything during the unpredictability of February weather in the Bay Area presented more than a fair share of topsy-turvy. Two dates postponed by rain led to some folks, unable to meet the new schedule, playing their matches midweek. Only half of the original twelve entrants bowled in glorious sunshine during the final Saturday.

When the dust finally settled, Cindy Moss, Ashok Verma, Art Kotoulas, and Sal Garcia-Lemus took home prize envelopes. Cathy Dinnean laid down the winning shot in the post-tournament scramble to claim the not-insubstantial contents of the Ron Byus Memorial Kitty. All in all, it was a pretty good event…

If enough people show interest, I’d consider setting up a similar league – with a couple of format tweaks – sometime this Summer. Let me know back-channel if you might be interested and if so, would you prefer a daytime event on a weekend, or an evening during the week.