Two newcomers to Levin Bowls – Valda Anderson and Robert Evans – took out the fimnals of the Handicap Singles on Thursday. Valda, a fourth year bowler from Foxton playing off a handicap of 16 went through the women’s post section (after a quarter final bye) with wins over leading players Liz Galloway in the semi-final and Heather Stempa in the final. Valda proved to be difficult to beat in all her games. Liz had to give her a start of 10 shots but Valda actually outscored her more experienced oppoment by 14 points to 13. In the final Valda received an 8 point start on Heather and scored 12 points to Heather’s 14 but in the context of a 16 end game the margin proved too great for Heather.
It was a similar sort of story in the men’s event. Robert Evans (handicap 8) beat Graeme Mathie (also on 8) 15 – 9 in the quarter final. Then in the semi-final Robert conceded Brian Lahman an 8 point start but managed to catch Brian comfortably scoring 20 points to Brian’s 9. So the final came down to Kumera Selby (playing off zero) against 8 handicapper Robert. Evans in fact made no race of it and when Selby conceded with three ends still to play Evans was ahead 20 points to 6.
To some degree the shortened games of 16 ends had an effect on skewing the results. Some games were completed in an hour and were perhaps not a genuine contest of singles play over a sustained period. Perhaps the range of handicaps was too great. There are a lot of if’s and maybe’s in trying to create a level playing field and give every player a chance to win in a handicap event. And, the sections of three players (while it solved the markers problem) meant that a number of players only got to play one qualifying game because one of their opponents had already had two wins.
This year the handicapper didn’t get it quite right but maybe next year will be different. One of the main aims of staging the handicap singles at this time of the year is to give players some concentrated play before the Intertclub competition begins. Entries were down this year for reasons known only to those who did not take part. Perhaps the club selectors need to be more proactive and encourage players to take part in this event, or else stage Interclub trials as the Johnston Park club from Feilding did on our green a couple of weeks ago. In that case the handicap singles could be relegated to a later date in the season if there is a proven desire to continue with this event. The Match Committee will launch a survey of opinions shortly.
In the meantime well done to Robert and Valda.