Professional Beiliss enjoys lifestyle

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 30

Professional Beiliss enjoys lifestyle

By

KEVIN TUTTY

Three years ago Peter Beiliss turned his back on that sporting status that many New Zealanders, especially administrators, cherish dearly — amateurism — and ventured into the relatively unchartered territory of professional bowls. His first encounter with his new profession was not memorable. It was to be the day after the closing ceremony at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games where Beiliss won the singles bronze medal.

He was to play in a tournament at Maroochydore, north of Brisbane, but only hours after the closing ceremony a storm broke. The rain continued all the next day washing out Bellis’s first professional tournament. Since then his fortunes have improved. He has gained a world-wide reputation with his gifted play and is constantly receiving invitations to play tournaments around the world. For the next five weeks he will be playing or travelling every day, and before the end of March he will have played in cities as widespread as Adelaide and Auckland, Palmerston North and Sydney, and Wanganui and Glasgow.

The decision to turn professional was one which Beiliss weighed carefully. He wanted to represent New Zealand in a Commonwealth Games, and only a couple of weeks before the Brisbane Games he was offered ?Aust6ooo to play in a tournament. He turned it down.

There was no guarantee that he would be able to make a comfortable living in the sport. The number of tournaments with substantial prizemoney were not great when Beiliss made his decision.

Since then the money has improved and at the end of next month Beiliss, along ■With the Palmerston North bowler, Phil Skoglund, will be in Coatbridge, near Glasgow, playing in a £40,000 indoor tournament. (The tournament is the outdoor game played on an indoor rink).

First prize is £12,000 ($35,000), more than Beiliss earned in the whole of 1985. In April he will return to Scotland with Skoglund for a pairs tournament with an identical purse. In addition there is a Countrywide tournament in New Zealand with a first prize of $16,000, so the prospects for New Zealand’s only full-time professional bowler look financially brighter in 1986. “When I became a professional I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought that what happened in the next four or five years would be vital. “Now the tournaments are starting to improve their prizemoney. If Australia can get its act together there will be more money on the circuit. It’s supposedly the wealthiest of the bowls playing countries,

but its biggest tournament has sAust2o,ooo. There are a lot of smaller tournaments with four and five thousand dollar purses.” Beiliss hopes 1986 might see a change in his circumstances — that he will not have to enter every tournament to survive.

“Last year I had no endorsements, but I have bowls bags and shoes that wil be in production next month. I hope that will help my finances and take some of the pressure off the playing side.” Beiliss has gone past the point of no return in his professional career. His initial thought was to play as a professional for five years. “I will be approaching that in another year and a bit, but I am in too deep now to pull out. I have spent a lot of my own money and I look on what I have done as an investment.

“I am a fitter by trade, but I might not get a job at 34. It would be a mundane job compared with what I am used to.”

There are periods when Beiliss doubts the wisdom of his decision. “But that is when I am not playing well and I soon overcome it. I really have no regrets about turning professional. It’s an enjoyable lifestyle.” Beiliss is an affable young man, giving the impression that he is — to use a popular term — laid-back. But engaged in conversation, even when relaxing, his thorough, professional attitude quickly becomes obvious.

It is not in his nature to whine about his fellow players, but when pressed he revealed that he does not agree with trust funds winch bowlers are permitted to use now to retain their amateur status. Asked if he had considered applying for reinstatement as an amateur he answered simply: “No. I wouldn’t go back on the decision I’ve made.”

Beiliss has always been a strong admirer of Richard Hadlee’s attitude towards his sport. He has not modelled himself on Hadlee, or any other sportsman, but says Hadlee has been an example. “He is 100 per cent professional and always puts in an earnest performance. Some people might accept being second, arid early in my career I was probably happy with that too, but not now. You have to do your best every time. Be positive.”

In the next couple of months Beiliss has a hectic schedule with tournaments all over the world. The dates and venues for all those tournaments are etched in his mind.

Also stored away are a host of facts which he relates at any opportunity to promote the game. Sponsorship is the crucial ingredient in the growth of the professional game, he says. “Some companies haven’t realised the potential of the

game. There are 90,000 adults out there playing the sport. That is a big market in New Zealand.”

Essential to the clinching of any major sponsorship deal is television. Without television sponsors are not interested, and in the past sports regarded as more exciting have tended to win the favours of the big sponsors.

Bowls, said Beiliss, can be as exciting as any sport. He pointed to his singles win against Morgan Moffat at the Rothmans national tournament a week ago. And on Sunday there was a nail-biting finish to the fours championship.

In Great Britain bowls is rapidly gaining in popularity as a television sport, particularly the indoor tournaments. Last year the top indoor tournament attracted seven million viewers, and that was

during the evening, said Beiliss. Bowls has to establish traditional tournaments; come up with more gimmicks. “It has to create an atmosphere like the strawberries and champagne of Wimbledon.” The national tournament, which ended at Woolston on Sunday, was far from a hyped-up event, but it brought Beiliss one of his most satisfying performances — a win in the singles final.

In spite of a series of good performances throughout last year, Beiliss was said by one reporter to have been ‘lucky” to be chosen for the New Zealand team to play Ireland last year.

Beiliss was determined to prove a point at Christchurch, but the one regret he had was that he was unable to progress further than the last eight in the fours.

“One of the things I would like to do is win a title with my father. He’s 69 now and might not be at many more tournaments.”

Late last year Beiliss achieved what the All Blacks were unable to do in 1985. He played in South Africa, and won an international Grand Prix series. In spite of what people believed the series was not lucrative.

As a professional sportsman, especially one who is pressed to survive, he considers he must be free to pursue his living in any country. Whether he returns to those troubled shores will depend on the prizemoney and the stability of the country. In Belliss’s short career in the professional ranks one win stands out among all others. It was his lastbowl success against the stocky Scotsman, Willie Wood, in the world championship singles at Aberdeen in July, 1984. Victory was especially sweet because it was Wood, who, in the last singles round at the Commonwealth

Games in Brisbane, gave Beiliss a hiding and prevented him from winning the gold medal. “There were 7000 people at that game. I had thought about it a lot leading up to the tournament I was running 50km a week so had plenty of time to think about the game. I visualised beating Willie with the last bowl. “I would have liked an easier win, but it was a good place to get my revenge, on his home patch.”

On reflection Beiliss believes he lost the gold medal in Brisbane because of his own errors.

The year before the Games he lived for several months on the Gold Coast. He played in the 1981 miniGames and won the singles. In the week before that tournament he 'put in 15 hours of practice. In 1982 he also had several months on the Gold Coast before the Games. But the week before the Games he practised for 45 hours. “I was acclimatised and

didn’t need the practice that the other members of the team needed. It was only after the Games when .1 looked at my log book that ! realised I had spent too much time on the practice green. I was at my peak when the Games started and at the end of the 10 days was going downhill.” That was a sobering experience for Beiliss and he is now very careful with his tournament planning. Beiliss has years left in the game, and- he quickly admits he stil has much to learn, especially about consistency of performance. But as he looked out across the Christchurch club’s green where four young children were playing with some expertise, he wondered whether he could learn fast enough to hold off the growing number of young men who seek to emulate the person who is endeavouring to lift bowls from behind those stark, high fences that surround hundreds of greens around the country, and place the game firmly in the public view.