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, 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 titleat the GisborneBowling 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”.
Cutting the ribbon to formally open the Gisborne Bowling Club's new lift to the clubrooms, bar and kitchen is life member Maurice Taylor. With him are club kaumātua Albie Gibson (at back) and past presidents and life members Arthur and Carol Hawes.
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.
