Berkeley Retains 2025 Bay Bridge Challenge Trophy

The Bay Bridge Challenge is the annual contest between Berkeley and the San Francisco LBC, held at the respective venues on alternating years and thus sometimes referred to as a “home and home” match. This year’s contest, held on Saturday, March 15, took place on two of SF’s three greens in Golden Gate Park, a lovely setting but where the greens are notoriously heavy and slow—it’s an achievement to get the jack, never mind a bowl, past the hog line.

It also tends to be cold! And this year was no exception, although the downpours earlier in the week had dissipated and, by the afternoon, it was actually quite pleasant. By that time, too, Berkeley had asserted its strength, winning five of the eight Triples matches. But San Francisco wasn’t giving up and came back after lunch to win 4 ½ (one tied game) to 3 ½. A valiant effort—but not quite enough, with Berkeley scoring 8 ½ to 7 ½ on the day thereby retaining the shield, which will now be displayed in our clubhouse for another year.

Well done to all the Berkeley bowlers who made the trip across the Bay, most especially to the teams of Hugo, Judy, and Joann, and also HC, Glenn, and Bernadette, who won both their games, as well as Cris, Cindy, and Aika, whose afternoon tie prevented an even split in games won/lost, which would have required a three-end bowl off. Finally, many thanks to our SFLBC hosts, whose hospitality was excellent.

The 2025 2-Bowl Singles Tournament was held on Saturday, March 8. On the fourth round of a (primarily) strength v strength format, Daniel Gorelick seized the crown, bettering his semi-final achievement of 2024.

The day was seasonably fresh, with a nippy breeze from time to time, but nothing to dampen the spirits and performance of the 12 players who eventually took to the field after several late dropouts, including one on the morning of the event. Ginger Chen graciously offered to withdraw to maintain an even number of players. Tournament Directors everywhere thank you, Ginger.

A random draw was used to determine the initial matchups for the games of first to reach 15 points, which resulted in a top six of Calvin Darling, Hugo Deaux, Chris Davis, Lennon Hamilton, Daniel Gorelick, and Art Kotoulas. After the second round, based on strength v strength, Chris, Daniel, and Hugo topped the table with two wins each, while Calvin was running close as the highest ranked of those on one win, one loss.

Only two players—Daniel and Hugo—were on an unblemished 3 wins at the end of Round 3, setting up a tasty final.Both players put in amazing shots in the final, but Daniel dominated from the outset and never looked back. It was not that Hugo played badly, drawing much applause from the peanut gallery, and losing five extremely close measures. But on this day, he was up against a finely tuned machine in the form of Daniel, who had set his eyes firmly on the prize and won the match 15-6. 

Congratulations to Daniel as this year’s 2-Bowl Champion! And thanks, as always to our hospitality crew, our great greenskeepers, and the markers who gave generously of their time.

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!