WHEN TANNED RETIREE Ted Forster removes his watch at the Bramhall Willow Street Park Lawn Bowling Green, he shows off a visible testament to his love for his gentlemanly sport: a section of skin as white as his T-shirt.
During the last two years, he and his wife, Millie, have spent hours out on the fenced, manicured 120-foot by 120-foot lawn throwing lopsided “bowls” to and fro for points. One recent weekday morning, they were trying to curve the bowls as close as possible to a small white “jack,” which is a shy bit larger than a billiard cue ball.
On the other side of the fence, a group of kids were playing with plastic bats and a father and his children were kicking around a soccer ball.
Ted Forster, who retired from Lockheed three years ago at age 62, bent down, took one step with his left foot, gripped his left knee with his left hand and slid the bowl with his right. Its path left an imprint on the grass, which had been mowed to a height of about three-sixteenths of an inch. He knocked one of his own bowls a little closer to the jack.
Millie Forster, standing behind him with the bowl at her shoulder, took her turn. She slipped her flattened spheroid right through his bowls and glided to within a few inches of the jack.
Photo: Hillary Schalit
“What are you trying to do, show me up?” Ted Forster jokingly asked his wife.
Strategies abound in this seemingly simple game. Light bowls can be knocked out of the way easier than heavy ones. Knocking the jack in another direction can change a game entirely, working for or against a player. At the beginning of the game, players can throw the jack far down the green if they know their opponents have difficulty with long bowls.
“If you ever start this game, you’ll really love it,” said Forster, a south San Jose resident. “Here no two shots are alike.”
The bowling green also levels physical differences between players.
“One great thing about this sport is that in some places you can see an 8-year-old playing against an 80-year-old,” said 83-year-old Tom Mansfield, a Glenite who has played at Bramhall Willow Street Park for 23 years. “And it can be a very even match, because of the agility of the young people versus the experience of the old people.”
Mansfield said there are about 5,000 bowlers in the United States, compared to 25,000 in Canada and 600,000 in Australia. Although matches in England can bring 20,000-30,000 spectators into special lawn-bowling stadiums, it’s not exactly a spectator sport here. Mansfield said he’d be surprised to find more than 10 people watching a game in this country.
Area cities like San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Oakland all boast of their own greens. The Bramhall Willow Street green — the only one in San Jose – was built in 1967, and the San Jose Lawn Bowls Club has roughly 40 members. Some of them are currently playing at competitions around the world, Mansfield said.
The green allows for eight simultaneous games. Players can play in singles, pairs, trios or quartets; trios are most common in the United States, Mansfield said. After all the bowls have been rolled, those bowls closer to the jack than an opponent’s nearest bowl count one point each.
On weekends, holidays and at competitions, custom holds that the players wear only white. On this day, however, Ted Forster was wearing a plaid button-up number over a white T-shirt.
He and his wife, who have played for two years, are still considered novices. He admitted he has sometimes held the bowl incorrectly and sent it curving off in the opposite direction.
Ted Forster eagerly shows off a variety of lawn-bowling equipment, such as a tape measure with tiny calipers (for those close calls) and a selection of “goops” to provide the fingers with a better grip (he also uses a moist towel that hangs out of his back pocket). For the coin toss that determines order of play, he even picked up a two-inch-diameter Buffalo Nickel at a novelty shop.
But in the end, it’s skill, not novelty, that wins out.
“You have to use your concentration,” Millie Forster says. “It’s a challenge every time you play.”
