BOWLING

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 18

BOWLING

By "number Two" THE TOURNAMENT

AN AUSPICIOUS START

•HOW THE GAMES WENT]

Once again tho annual Dominiofli bowling tournament has come to Wel« liugton, and the play could not hav»' been opened under more auspicious conditions. The "weather was perfect, just what trundlers from Auckland revel in^. One missed a number of old familiar faces from the tournament—-Norrie-Bell and his son Norrie, Pilkington, Erniai Harraway, the Coltmans, to mentioa just a few of the old-time. stalwarts-* but nevertheless there was a very taif, sprinkling of other redoubtable expon* ents. The arrangements for the gather* ing had been exceedingly well planned* with the result that no hitch of any; kind occurred except in the first.:twor rounds of the pairs when it was dis-' covered that the time limit of tw» hours was too short. ' The fine "weather enabled good pro» gress to be made with the singles, sa that by Tuesday night only the semi«. finalists were left in. The big snr« prise of the opening day was the defeat of. Maxwell Walker, first by Arthur Marshall, of the Wellington Club, and then by J. C. Eigby, of Dunedin. Tho popular professor, whose style is truly, regarded as the correct method of bowl* ingj was certainly off his game "when.' playing Marshall in the first round, and he went down by 18 points to 10. He could not get the strength of the greet, -whereas Marshall, "who is ono of the. Wellington Club's strongest Pen-i nant leads, played beautiful bowls. Marshall, by the way, is a player who? plays the game seriously at all times,' and he is one of those who, if unable to find a place in an ordinary roll-up game of an evening, will tak» ont four bowls and practice drawing assiduously; by himself—an excellent ' example to follow. Walker's game with Eigby was a little more even, and he lost by onlyj three points. Marshall had a win ia the second round, but lie lost in the third and fourth., ' J. D. Best, of the Dunedin Club, whaj won the singles championship r in. 1925,. lasted out until the sixth round, when he lost his second life to W. Paxkhoitsej of Wellington. W. Fielding, of Hatai-. tai, took, his first life in the fourth round. - - H. A. Eobertson, of Onehunga, wh» was runner-up for the Australian, singles) championship in 1932, lost to J: B. fieid, of Lyall Bay, in the first round, and to Brighting, of Hataitai, in the sixti. round. A coincidence of the section, play in the singles was that E. Caughley, o£ Kelburn, lost both his games in. thai first and second rounds by 21 points to 9. In the first round he was beaten by; H. Goombes (Putaruru) and' in, the second by C.A. White (Matai). ; The Australian representation at the tournament is not large, and the four, who took part in the .singles—L.- S. Cumming (City, Sydney), W.J. Beisley (East Fremantle), E. Bogersoa (Mount Lawley, Western Australia), and S. Little (Brighton Beach, Melbourne)—all failed to survive the section play. It was Eogerson who. aa skip of an Australian rink defeated Maxwell Walker ia one of the Test games played with New Zealand when the Dominion tournament was held in. Wellington in 1929. In that year Australia was -well represented at the tournament. .-..-■•.' :Some_very pretty play was seen in. the concluding: games of the singles. W. Parkhouse (Wellington), J. B. Eeia (Lyall Bay), L. Naylor (Lyall Bay), H. L. Brighting (Hataitai), and 8.. E. Austin (Cromwell) gave exhibitions of bowling of the highest order, and showed conclusively that they are players fit to .play in any company. In his game with Eeid, McAlister showed a fine fighting spirit, and-he reversed the tables with telling. effect against a redoubtable opponent. The play in'the preliminary stages■ of the. final between Parkhouse and McAlister was not of the same quality as that witnessed in the-semi-finals, but it became more interesting as the game pro* gressed,,and especially so when MoAlister wiped out the deficit against him and equalised the score on the fifteenth, head. This, of course, put Parkhouse on his mettle) and he played right np to the top of his form, giving evidence of the possession of the highest qualities of resource and skill as a bowler.His win was well merited, but his opponent was by no means disgraced* and as a loser he was as popnlar witl* the crowd as Parkhonse was as a win-: ner.. Parkhouse's win1 has given great pleasure to the members of the Wellington Club, >as it is sixteen years sineei a representative of that club won the singles championship, C. B. Ingrain, having annexed the title when tho Dominion tournament was played ia Wellington in 1917. Throwing -Hie Jack. "r Very often in club games and ToTh ups when a short head is wanted by » skip, a. lead will throw up the jack witfc delightful disregard of the distance th» rules say it must travel from the front of the mat, namely, 66ft. The .mai may be well up the.green, and tbf throw may be short, but provided it ia up to the distance peg it is seldom thas anyone worries atout it. The distant* pegs have to be 72ft from the kerbinf of the ditch, so if the front of the xn'aff is up to the maximum of 20ft from th» ditch, it is obvious that a jack just -ia line with the distance peg has not been, thrown 66ft. In the eighth round of the singles championship, when W. Parkhouse (Wellington) was playing W. Franks (Featherston), Parkhouse objected to the length the jack had been thrown, maintaining that-it was not the minimum distance of 66ft. His objection was upheld and he was given, the re-throw himself, making the head a long one and scoring a toucher with his first bowl, Franks -Having been short with his first. Parkhouse won the game by 9 points. Bules in the Tournament. ' . t { Umpires cannot see all that is.happening on a green at the one time, and it is possible therefore for breaches of the rules_ to pass unobserved. Two rules which were broken, during the week without official notice having been taken of them in all instances were those relating to the following np of bowls and the placing of the foot ' on the mat. The rules say that bowls must not be followed for more than 20ft, and that the foot which is on the mat at the moment of delivery must be not less than three inches from, the front of the mat. The Three-Bowl Pairs. >" It was not long before the shortened time limit allowed for the three-bowl pairs, two.hours, was found to be too short. The three-bowl game was introduced for the purpose otsaving time, and.it was thought that a tfcae limit of two hours would suffice. However, it was found that quite a number of games could not be finished in. that time, and for all section games after the second round an extra quarter of an hour had to be granted. The conditions provided' for the post-section, games being of 21 heads, with a time limit of 2$ hours, and as "the section, games were also of 21 heads it woulfl appear that it was expecting too muck to expect any of these games -to b» [finished within two honrs. ,". ' 7