Stu Robb, the oldest member of the Gisborne Bowling Club at 96, still challenges his rivals on the green. He came to the sport about five years ago after giving up a lifetime of playing tennis at the age of 91.
Stu Robb was following in the footsteps of many ageing people when he decided to change to the less strenuous sport of lawn bowls.
He was 91 and was stepping down from a life playing tennis.
Robb, now 96, almost immediately won the junior championship title at the Gisborne Bowling Club before a hip injury saw him miss two or three years of action.
A surgeon told Robb he was too old for hip surgery.
“I had news for him,” he said. “In the end, they operated.
“I’ve just got back,” he told the Gisborne Herald at a club function held to officially open the club’s long-sought lift last week.
Robb played tennis at many venues over the years, originally starting at the Patutahi Tennis Club and including the Gisborne Lawn Tennis Club.
His tennis mates of more recent years – regular Saturday players retired principal Peter Ferris and Olympic Games kayaking champion and former pharmacist Grant Bramwell – developed “tall shoulders”, meaning they had difficulty raising their shoulders to serve and had given up tennis.
Robb was having mobility issues playing tennis and so “we came here [to the Gisborne Bowling Club]”.
He quickly developed a new attitude towards bowls.
“I used to think it was an old man’s game. I used to think, why, as a younger fella, should I play come and play bowls when I can play tennis? It’s more energetic.”
He realised there was more to bowls than he thought.
“There’s a lot in it. There’s a lot of gifted players here. It’s not as easy as it looks. A lot of younger people are playing – more than a few.”
The younger ones were providing strong opposition to the more experienced players, Robb said.
Gisborne Bowling Club stalwart and project manager for the lift, Murray Ferris, said Robb was a stubborn man, but “he’s starting to use the lift now”.
Ferris said the lift was originally mooted about 20 years ago, but older club members vouched that if they could walk up to the first floor, so could others.
The project was resurrected in 2020, but delays and price increases were complicating issues.
The $150,000 lift project had left the club debt-free, thanks to funders the Marjorie Redstone Trust, the Mangatawa Beale-Williams Trust, the New Zealand Lotteries Commision, the Clark Charitable Trust, the Grassroots Trust, the Kiwi Gaming Foundation and Trust Tairāwhiti.
More decking was also built outside the clubrooms.
Ferris said the lift helped older members get to the first-floor clubrooms, kitchen and bar facilities.
Older members were only playing bowls in summer when they could enjoy refreshments without having to go upstairs.
Ferris said the club was a critical part of the social life of many older people.
The club operated on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday when people could “roll in”, sign up and enjoy a game of bowls.
Ferris said the Gisborne Bowling Club, established in 1884, was the oldest bowling club in New Zealand still on its original site.
The club had 90 members and he was hopeful of boosting membership.
Around 100 Gisborne men helped by prostate cancer diagnosis work at the Mātai Institute.