Berkeley lawn bowlers have been rolling bowls in Poet’s Corner since 1928

By Joanne Furio, Berkeleyside, 7/24/2022
Photo Credits: Ximena Natera

Berkeleyside (the leading local news source) interviewed President Ethan Bortman and club members during our July 6th Wednesday draw game. Here are some photos by a club member, including photos of Sal Garcia-Lemus teaching Ximena Natera (Berkeleyside photographer) how to lawn bowl. We expect to see Berkeleyside’s published story towards the end of the week. 😊

Report by Jim Corr

The 2022 PIMD (All Gender) Pairs Tournament featured several “firsts.” It was the first in two years due to the COVID pandemic ruling out this competition for 2021, and was the first ever to be held in two stages at two different greens. It was also, as far as anyone could recall, the first in PIMD to feature the “strength-to-strength” format in the final round. As far as the two-greens element is concerned, the thinking behind the PIMD Tournament Committee’s decision was that prowess at two different venues would be a good indicator of the worthiness of the champions.

Sixteen teams signed up for the event, with the first round being held at Rossmoor LBC on Saturday, May 14, randomly assigned to four round robin sections of four teams. The two winners of each section, plus the next four best in the overall standings advanced to the final round, which was held at the Berkeley club a week later.

At the latter stage, teams were matched “strength-to-strength,” which meant the team ranked Number 1 from the preliminary round played Number 2, Number 3 played Number 4, and so on down the line. Following the results of the first game, teams were re-sorted according to their new position in the standings and again played 1 v 2, 3 v 4, etc. After the second game, the process was repeated once more. Two features of this format are notable: first, as the name implies, teams get matched against their close peers from the preliminaries and, second, a team in the lower reaches of the rankings can make considerable progress toward the top if they win all their second round games and depending on how other results fall out. This latter element proved to be quite relevant.

Coming into the finals, the husband and wife team of Larry Collaco and Gloria Rios (Rossmoor) led the way, but in the first game lost out to the Berkeley duo of Hugo Deaux and Jim Audas, the only other team to have won all three games in Round 1. Hugo and Jim A. followed that with an exceedingly close win over Jim Corr (Berkeley) and Micheal McClintock (Santa Clara) that saw one of those “turning point” shots that bowlers know only too well. Holding four in the head, which would have put them two up with two ends left, Jim C. decided to try for five but, narrowly missing the line, succeeded in hitting in one of the opponents’ bowls, thereby reducing the margin on that end to one. The three-point swing was more than enough to account for Hugo and Jim Audas’s victory by one point. In another narrow win, Hugo and Jim A. overcame Tom Burnoski and Ian Cameron (San Jose) in Match 3, thereby becoming the only team to go undefeated over the two rounds of the tournament and thus well-deserved champions.

Also impressive was the performance of David Eldred and Ron Esparaza (San Francisco). Starting off the final day in last (12th) place, they put together a string of three victories and marched through the rankings to end up in 4th—and right on the heels of Tom and Ian who took third place with a one-point better differential.

Congratulations to Hugo and Jim and thanks to all at both clubs who put in the time and effort to make the event a great success.

-Jim Corr

Thank you Bernie Birt for the great photos!
You can find more photos from the day on the PIMD website

Here is Jim Corr’s 5/24/2022 report on the outcome of the 5/7/2022 Berkeley Jamboree

Berkeley Jamboree–Better Late Than Never!

Berkeley Bowlers:

It’s taken a while. So with apologies for the delay, here’s the outcome of the Jamboree.

While all lawn bowling is meant to be fun (a poor day bowling is better than a great day in front of the computer, as we like to say), the Berkeley Jamboree is one of the “funner” tournaments on the bowls calendar. Founded more years ago than most of us can remember by Howard Mackey, a longtime beloved BLBC bowler and holder of many positions of responsibility at the Club over the years, this three game triples tournament has an unusual format in which participants retain their position (Skip, Vice, or Lead) throughout, but change teams over the course of the day. All bowlers hand in a scorecard for each of their games and, at the end, when the numbers are totted up, prizes go to the three top performers in each position.

This year’s event, held on Saturday, May 2022 and overseen by Hugh Deaux, had its own mini-crisis as all nine would-be participants from the Leisure Town club had to call off near the last minute because of a COVID outbreak among its members. With some scrambling and arm-twisting, mainly of BLBC members, by Hugo, he still managed to field a force of 36 bowlers on the day. Perhaps the resulting over-preponderance of Berkeley bowlers in the numbers—or home green advantage—affected the results. (The only alternative explanation, of course, would be the undoubted skill of BLBC bowlers 😉)

When all was said and done: the winners were as follows:
Leads:
Rolayn Tauben (Berkeley)
Gary Samonsky (Berkeley)
Charles Russo (Berkeley)
Vices:
Jim Audas (Berkeley)
Glenn Nunez (Berkeley)
David Eldred (San Francisco)
Skips:
Sal Garcia (Berkeley)
Larry Murphy (San Francisco)
Fred Anast (Palo Alto)

Congrats to all the prize winners, and as always, a big shout out to our great hospitality team who prepared sustenance, to those who helped with green prep and takedown, and to Dave McMullen, Greenskeeper, who put in many hours to bring the green literally “up to speed.” Photo Credits to Rolayn Tauben (titling is mine).

Jim
PS: A report on the 2022 PIMD Pairs Tournament will be forthcoming shortly, either from me or PIMD President Arthur Stewart. Spoiler alert: this year’s champions are Berkeley’s own Hugo Deaux an Jim Audas.

Happy Friday!

At a Friday draw game 🙂

At a Wednesday draw game 🙂