Berkeley Prevails at First PIMD “Battle of the Rinks”

Rinks play or Fours is not a very popular form of the game of bowls in the USA, especially at the club level. Most players prefer the opportunity to use three bowls in Triples or four bowls in Pairs and Singles. But Rinks is widely played overseas and is commonly, these days, the third format in the “big” Open tournaments in the USA—the South Central, Southwest, and US Opens. 

Partly with the aim of raising the visibility of the Rinks format—and partly just for fun (that’s what we’re here for, right?)—PIMD decided this year to institute a new tournament: rinks format with the quartets each representing their home club. No dual member ringers allowed. This is the first time, at the PIMD level, that clubs rather than individual bowlers have faced off.

With Santa Cruz LBC agreeing to host the inaugural event, held on Saturday August 9, we were guaranteed a fast and relatively true green—not to say there weren’t tricky patches occasionally. In addition to the BLBC foursome—Rob Hoey (skip), Jim Corr (Vice) Russ Leonard (Second), and Janice Bell (Lead)—there were entrants from San Jose, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, which fielded two teams. Attempts to put together a second BLBC team proved unsuccessful for a variety of reasons—bowlers out of town, bowlers with other commitments that day, bowlers not keen on the travel to the outer reaches of the PIMD universe, etc etc.

Berkeley did well in their first two games in the morning, defeating the home team by 5 points over the 12 ends played and Palo Alto by the maximum plus points of 7, each player contributing to the overall team performance. In the afternoon, a bit of the after-lunch blahs set in and BLBC struggled in the early stages against the San Francisco “A” team but managed a comeback to pull off a 2-point win in the third game. At that juncture both San Jose and Berkeley were the only two teams with three wins, and the luck of the draw had them face each other in what was, in effect, a Final, winner-takes-all.

Berkeley had three points on the board after the first two ends, but San Jose (Jon and Tom Burnoski, John Johnson and Reggie Banares) responded with a run of winning ends, including four on the fourth, to establish a powerful 9-2 lead at the halfway stage. At this point, Rob, who had been playing some fine “skip shots” throughout the day to save many an end for BLBC, called a quick team conference. His pep talk (who remembers the actual words?) was Churchillian in its effect as Berkeley went on to storm the remaining 6 ends and pull off victory by 13-9. 

And so BLBC has the honor of winning the first PIMD “Battle of the Rinks.”