Blue Riband Event Of Bowls Championships Will Be Started On Five Greens Today

Southland Times, Issue 24012, 30 December 1939, Page 11

Blue Riband Event Of Bowls Championships Will Be Started On Five Greens Today

By

JACK HIGH

The rinks championship, the blue riband event of the South Island bowls tournament, at present being played in Invercargill, will be begun on five greens this morning. Many first-class exponents of two-ball play, including champions with impressive records, are taking part. There are three days of qualifying rounds in which a field of 40 rinks will compete. The final games will be played on Wednesday and Thursday.

In the absence of the personnel of many of the rinks engaged it is hard to make even a fair forecast of the prospects of the result of the championship. All of the visiting rinks are well balanced, and it would not cause a surprise to see one of them take the honour.

One rink which stands out as a team capable of repeating its performances of last year when it won the Southland New Year rinks and the Oamaru rinks is that skipped by J. A. Veitch (Dimedin). A. E. Silver is the lead, S. Lawson is No. 2 and H. Gardiner is No. 3. Gardiner has been indisposed and although he did not take part m. the singles because of his health he showed that he will be fit to take his place in the rinks by qualifying in the pairs on Thursday. . Veitch’s rink is in B section. His strongest opposition will probably come from the Southland rink skipped by A. E. Gardner and the Georgetown rink skipped by A. McKenzie. The latter has a moderately strong rmk which if playing well is capable of extending the strongest teams. The rmk is as follows: L. Smith, J. J. Stewart, S. Glover and McKenzie. That rink won fame for its club by winning the Easter rink at Oamaru this year and obtaining the first certificate won by the club- . .. D. F. Tait, of Hokonui, is also in the section and his rink may be the cause of an upset. C. Hamilton, who went very well in. the singles and was one of the five two-lifers on the first day of the tournament is the lead, A. Johnstone is the second and I. W. Martin is the third e TEAM OF VETERANS A team of veterans from Hie Dunedin Club makes up the second Dunedin rink which would appear on paper to have a good chance of winning the championship. It is skipped by J. Hutchison and contains two New Zealand champions in J. D. Best and J. C. Rigby as the front men. W. Anderson, an experienced tournament player is the third. This rink is in section D in which other rinks which appear to have chances of success are those skipped by H. L. Hay (Invercargill) and J. Manson (Southland). T. R. MacGillivray (Roslyn) skipped a good rink at the last New Year tournament This time it is strengthened by the inclusion of W. J. McKay. D. O’Connell is a member and R. B.

Clarke, a New Zealand pairs champion is the fourth man. MacGillivray”s team is in section A and judging by the others in that section it should have a good chance of qualifying. Others in section A who will be looked to to put up a good showing are D. K. Torrance’s Southland rink and S. Preece’s Gore rink. S. Hutchison is skipping a reasonably strong Caledonian rink consisting of J. Patterson, J. Robertson and J. Smith. This rink might do very well. The Cromwell rink (E. W. George, W. A. Harlow, D. Nicol and H. . T. Wilkinson) is a good all-round section (C), but it should have no difficulty in qualifying. There is much good material in several of the local rinks, and it would appear that the competition is going to be a keen one. A better idea of prospects will be obtained after the first and second day’s play. Singles Finalists Both Have Fine Records J. A. Veitch (Dunedin) and N. W. McGorlick (Bluff), the finalists in the South Island singles championship, have met so many times in singles play and their successes have been so evenly distributed that it was a difficult matter to forecast the winner of the South Island title. McGorlick has proved himself an outstanding singles player, and although his game is confined to consistent drawing on full-length heads he must always ba regarded as a dangerous opponent fer any man. Veitch impresses one more than McGorlick because of his all-round ability. He is well equipped for championship play, and except that he does not employ the fastest of shots when driving at a head he may be said to possess al Ithe shots in the game. Like McGor*. lick Veitch is a strong draw player; he is also a fine exponent of the yard-gone shot, and he probably uses that shot in singles play more than any other seen in the south in the last 10 years or more. A BIG SCORE It is doubtful if ever in any singles game McGorlick has been beaten by such a big margin as 26 to 6, the scores in the McGorlick-Veitch game on the Southland green on Wednesday. Those scores more than ever demonstrated the uncertainty of the game, and once more bore out the contention that a good player may be a champion today and a novice tomorrow. . Southland greens probably more than greens in other centres make such a condition possible. It is said that the good player always will come out on top, but too often that claim has been “wrecked” because of the condition of a green. Like the turf where it is said that weight brings horses and donkeys together and that mud is a great leveller so can the condition of a green upset the champion or reduce him to the standard of the novice. It also may favour one champion and not another. This season the greens in Southland have been cruel to the good player. It does not often happen that way but

the fact remains that Southland players have been at a disadvantage for the first half- of the season. If they gain any success in the South Island tournament they will have fully earned the honours. DECISION CRITICIZED The decision of the management committee of the Southland Bowling Centre in ordering a fifth round in the singles championhip to be played on the first day of the tournament was freely criticized by local players ana visitors alike. Two matters which did not find favour with many of the players who qualified for play in the singles on the second day were the lateness of the decision of the committee and the “protection” afforded two-lifers by not asking them to play a fifth round. It was common knowledge to 99 per cent, of the players in the singles that they were expected to take part in four rounds, not. five, on the opening day. What the committee gained by ordering the one-lifers to play a fifth round is hard to find. No further progress was made on the second day than if the original decision to play the four rounds on the first day had been adhered to. The committee knew what the result (in numbers qualifying) would be before the singles championship was begun. Then was the time to make the decision to play an extra round—if it was necessary—not when the day’s play was just about completed and players were ready to knock off for the day. . It was stated on Wednesday night that the committee at headquarters green-(Southland) made its decision at half past three on Tuesday afternoon. Some of the players did not know of the decision until five or 10 . minutes before their fourth round games were completed and others about half an hour.

Whether the committee was or was not protected by a rule which gave it power to alter the time of play does not concern the players as much as the rule which stated that the singles would be played on the automatic twolife system. By splitting the qualifying players into two sections, as it were, and asking one section to play an extra game the committee actually defeated the princple of the two-life system and gave five men byes all at once and caused the subsequent draw to become irregular. That aspect of the matter may not have occurred to the commitin future it would be well in the event of a similar situation either to let the players know in plenty of time about altered conditions of play or put the position before them and seek their co-operation. It is now obvious a mistake was made by someone in assessing the number of players who would be available after four rounds of play and that an adjustment might have been necessary. But the players, or a section of them should not have been penalized. Least of all should the two-lifers have been given protection at the expense of the one-lifers. Had they been asked to play the extra round (as well as the one-lifers) little criticism if any may have been forthcoming.