Truth be told, lawn bowling is tougher than it looks. Rolling a weighted ball of hard rubber across 80 feet of artificial turf and attempting to come within inches of a white marker may seem like child’s play, but it’s actually quite challenging—and addicting.
“It’s an easy game to learn, but hard to master,” said Seymour Hersh, a retired meat cutter who’s played the sport for almost 13 years. “I relate to this a lot with golf. You’ve got to keep your head still and concentrate so you don’t dump the shot.”
Hersh, who bowls three or four times a week, is one of 65 members in the Santa Maria Lawn Bowling Club. The private club is sponsored by the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. Made up mostly of retirees, the club includes a fair number of women—about a third of the group—and holds friendly competitions Tuesdays through Saturdays at the Abel Maldonado Center’s Joslyn Bowling Green.
The sport provides a physical outlet for seniors—some into their 90s—as well as an environment where club members have made friendships that have lasted decades. For many players, the sport is considered an alternative to golf since it doesn’t take all day, unless there’s a tournament.
“When you’re out here on the turf, it’s competitive. When you’re inside eating at the club, it’s social. It’s friendly competition,” said Dick Gillespie, a retired physical education teacher and club member. “I like it because it’s something both my wife and I can do on an equal basis. I play a lot of golf, and my wife will go out and play with me every once in a while, but she just doesn’t feel confident and doesn’t enjoy it as much. But she loves coming down here.”
Obscure in this country, lawn bowling—considered a hybrid of traditional bowling, bocce ball, and golf—is still popular among bowlers of all ages in England, Australia, and New Zealand. It originated in England as early as the 12th century and was played with balls of wood or stone. In 1848, a meeting of 200 bowlers in Scotland produced the standardized rules for the sport, and the Scots introduced the sport to America around the turn of the century. The first lawn bowling club in the United States was established in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1901.
Lawn bowling claims a rich, 30-plus year history in Santa Maria. The club’s founder, Thaddeus Stevenson, chaired the committee to bring lawn bowling to Santa Maria in 1972. The Santa Maria Lawn Bowling club officially formed in 1978 and by the end of the year had 43 charter members.
The club owes much of its existence to the generosity of philanthropist Marcelles Joslyn, whose foundation funded the construction of its first clubhouse and similar clubs in cities throughout Central and Southern California.
The Joslyn Foundation also helped pay for the installation of the original green in Santa Maria, which was replaced in 1993 with artificial turf—the first bowling green of its kind in the United States, according to members.
The current clubhouse (the group’s third) was dedicated in 1990. In addition to a full-size kitchen and social dining area, it’s festooned with memories: photographs of club members and presidents, trophies from past tournaments, and souvenir pins from other lawn bowling clubs around the world.
The club has traveled to Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Spain, and Portugal, and has hosted many professional lawn bowlers from all over the world.
The club’s instruction chairman and past president Jim Graham has bowled for more than 50 years and has been a member for 17.
“It’s a game for young and old,” he said. “The younger you are, the more inclined you are to be competitive and go into major tournaments. The players we have in the local clubs are usually elderly and don’t even take up the game until they retire.”
According to current president Steve Mitchell, the club would like to see a younger generation get involved in the sport.
“We’ve had a lot of Santa Maria kids during our lunch hour watch us, and they’ve really seemed intrigued,” Mitchell said. “We’ve invited them in, and so far we haven’t had any takers. But they like watching.”
The rules of lawn bowling are fairly straightforward. The sport is played on a rectangular field, divided into rinks, similar to lanes in traditional bowling. The bowls used by players aren’t perfectly round, but “biased,” meaning they’re lopsided and weighted. They can be rolled forehand or backhand and can be made to curve to the right or left.
The goal, in short, is to get your bowls—individually or in teams of up to four—closest to the jack, a smaller white or yellow ball.
There’s a great deal of strategy involved. Players will try to curl around bowls that stand in their way, and since the jack can be knocked out of position, more experienced players attempt to gauge the field and roll to possible spots where it might end up.
Matches at the Joslyn club are determined by a blind draw from whomever happens to be at the green by the 10 a.m. start. They usually last about two hours. For yearly dues of $90, club members are allowed full access to the clubhouse and use of the green anytime for practice.
The club is open to any adults who want to participate and offers free beginner’s lessons taught by Graham and Hersh.
“It’s a great game and a very low-impact exercise,” Hersh said. “You meet a lot of people out here, and it’s very relaxing.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas prefers bowl cuts. Contact him at jthomas@santamariasun
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 2, 2009.