The US Open kicked off on Sunday, November 3rd the host clubs did a phenomenal job herding cats (I mean bowlers) around the various greens. A whole bunch of Newport bowlers traveled to Arizona for the events and we came away with some pretty nice hardware.

Finishing 1st in the Women's Pairs Championship Flight: Anne "When is My Novice Status Ending" Nunes 

Finishing 1st in the Men's 4's Championship Flight: Ivan "It's Gotta Be the Fedora" Hyland, Lou Cohen, Tad Dutch, and Mike Ruggles

For the full coverage and finishes check out: https://www.lawnbowlingusopen.com/copy-of-save-2018-next-to-last-home

Starting next year, the US Open is going to be hosted in Orange County, CA (I'm already blocking off my vacation - apologies to my wife).

​Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to the host clubs and all the Newport Bowlers for representing the Harbor so well.

Hello Newport Members,

As many of you have likely noticed, blog posts have been a bit sparse for the last few months. Unfortunately, this is due to a significantly increased draw on my free time as a result of work. 

I'd love some help if anyone is interested in taking on the weekly posts. I'm happy to help moving forward but I am unable to commit the time to keeping ahead of all the comings and goings at the club. I will continue to support the blog through the end of the year but won't be able to continue into 2020 as the primary curator.

The process of posting is extremely simple and there's a lot of room to be as creative as you'd like to be. We can easily set up a meeting with our Webmaster to allow the two of us to hand off access and explain the process.

If anyone's interested, please email me: andrew.m.dufresne@gmail.com

Thank you!

On Saturday, October 26th the events committee held their 2nd annual Western themed day. This year we had a strong turnout with 24 bowlers (8 triples teams) and a total of 46 people for the dinner and fun activities. Two ten end games were played with Cash prizes to the 1st and 2nd place teams.   

Tournament winners:

1st place Ben Shaw, Mike Allen, and two leads Jane Wood am game and Martin Wood pm game

2nd place Bill Blair, Phyllis Turner, and Sam Wenzel 

We also had a "rope the steer" contest.  There was a "rope off" between Bill Day, Joan Phillips, and Jim Reach.  Jim won the rope off and the $20 prize money.  I'm sure he's headed for NFR (National Finals Rodeo) soon. 

Our own Charlie Herbert again proved to be both a dogged competitor and a terrific ambassador for the US in the world Bowls community. Charlie traveled to Adelaide, Australia and braved extremely hot and windy (and rainy on the last day) conditions and made it through to the elimination round Quarterfinal matches by finishing 3rd in his section.

For those unfamiliar, the World Bowls Champion of Champions is an extremely competitive event with nations from around the world sending some of their best bowlers. The initial format is a round-robin within the player's section with the top 3 finishers moving on to compete in an elimination Quarter-Semi-Finals match play.

Charlie was able to broadcast quite a few of his matches over Facebook which those of us back home really enjoyed as several of those matches came down to the very last bowl of a 3-end tie-break.

When you see Charlie around the club, after the US Open concludes in Arizona later this week, be sure to congratulate him and I'm sure he'll also have some fun stories to share of the experience.

First Steve Monfre and now Brian Mulvaney - what's this part-time blogger/bowler to do?

Brian Mulvaney was the first one to tap me to play in a tournament with him and we managed to completely cough up a 4 bowl lead in our last match in the Novice Pairs in 2016. If only we'd realized that, "the curse of the one big end," would haunt us in every tournament for the next 3 years.

For those who don't know, Brian has received a great work opportunity up in the Seattle, WA area. A regular at Saturday social bowls, Monday nights, and most of the club and regional tournaments, he'll be missed. He'll still have a presence in Newport so expect to see him around but we definitely want to wish him all the best in his new venture.

Here are the winners from our latest tournament.

1st - Patrick Senske
2nd - Guilia Gallo
3rd - Tad Dutch