New Brighton Man Took Up Bowls At Age 0f79

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28536, 15 March 1958, Page 5

New Brighton Man Took Up Bowls At Age 0f79

MA NY bowlers take up the sport when they are middleaged, some when they are in their early twenties or early ’teenS, but very few are like Mr J. B. McClymont and elect to start playing when they are 79 When his health caused him to give up his favourite sport, golf, he turned to bowls. At an age when many bowlers feel they are too old for the sport and think of retiring from it, Mr McClymont has started building up a good record as a bowler. A member of the New Brighton club, he finished runner-up in the first year colts’ championship at the club and the next .year reached the semi-final of his colts’ championship. He is now, at the age of 81, in his third year at the club.

Golf Successes Before his bowling career, began, Mr McClymont was a very keen golfer. After he returned from World War I he joined the Avondale club in 1920 when the course was first being cut out of scrub and sand. He was one of the earliest members and served on the club’s executive for several years. Mr McClymont was a member of Avondale for about 20 years. At this club he won the Mitchell Cup for match play and the Scales Cup, and frequently played against J. Millard, whose 68 is still a course record at Shirley. Mr McClymont then moved to New Brighton and joined the Rawhiti club in 1943. At Rawhiti he won the Veterans’ Cup three times and achieved the unusual when he went round the club’s course in 75—a score equal to his age. The well-known Christchurch golfer, Mr Harry Blair, has

recently been close to accomplishing a similar feat at the Shirley course but has so far been unsuccessful. Because of his military career, Mr McClymont had a natural interest in rifle shooting and in this sport he had considerable success. In an inter-company competition between the Bruce < ’ifl Dunedin Rifles, he won six times from 1899 to 1905. An aura of his former military life still seems to surround him. A picture in his house of the charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo, and his own military erectness and neatly ‘clipped moustache, all offer evidence of his former career Mr McClymont was a lieu-tenant-colonel, in command of the Second Otago Battalion in World War I. Mr McClymont’s years sit lightly on him; he is still very active, possibly because he has always played some sport, for the exercise it provides.