He's joined numerous acquaintances who were golfers but now grace the pristine greens of bowling lawns.
At the village club he has been taking lessons with Bay coach/selector Dave Palmer but emphasises he rubs shoulders with many adroit bowls players (such as Tony Small, fondly known as AG, and Ian Mason) and isn't shy to pick their brains.
"There's a perception in the comparison between bowls and golf that they are old man's sport. It's a misconception, as it was with golf, because it's certainly not," he says, pointing out how a rash of elite young professionals dominate the PGA circuit globally.
"I've found very quickly bowls can be a young person's sport and there are a lot of younger people starting to play it," says Doyle.
He is among seven other Hawke's Bay under-8 players competing at the national inter-centre competition at the Johnsonville Bowling Club in Wellington this weekend.
He'll play at No2 in the Bay fours team with clubmate and skip Greg Hodges, No3 Bryan Godber (Bowls Taradale), and former amateur golf prodigy Grant Hall (Havelock North) as lead.
Team captain Lloyd Fitness, a perennial juniors singles winner from Bowls Taradale, is the singles representative while Bowls Heretaunga pair of Dean Drummond (lead) and Paul Harrison will spearhead the pairs hopes.
The Bay will play Wairarapa, Thames Valley and Auckland in section five of the nationals at Johnsonville today before the winners proceed to post-section play tomorrow at Naenae.
Doyle is in his first year as an under-8 competitor at a nationals that is a recent addition to the Bowls New Zealand calendar.
It is based on the National Intercentre structure and is open to all 27 centres in the country.
Dunedin won the inaugural men's event last year.
Doyle, a former Bay junior (under-5) representative, has two Havelock North club titles to his name, which he won two years ago in the seniors fours as a lead.
In his last year as a junior, he and Hall played in pairs and shared some good jokes.
He finds many comparisons between the two codes.
"When you're talking in terms of putters, it's about speed and line and all those sorts of things, so I see a tremendous amount of comparisons to bowls from golf," says the former New Zealand High Performance amateur coach, who is making good use of sport psychology lessons he gleaned over the years.
"I've certainly experienced a lot of poor thinking from a lot of bowlers who don't know too much about sport psychology, which is very noticeable in golf," he says, not shy to point out to bowls teammates every so often that the glass is half full and not half empty when things seem to look hopeless.
He doesn't lose sight of the fact that he's a team member, so espousing a perceived sense of psychobabble is a preserve for those he's built an affiliation with.
"I'm only one of the Indians here, so I can't talk about those sorts of things," he says with a grin but reveals he is able to chide one or two of them in a jocular vein.
Akin to golf, technique in delivery is crucial to pick productive lines on the lawns before cultivating a desirable feel for speed and other such variables.
"But it's like golf where you have your good days and your bad ones, so sometimes it's too easy to be trying a little too hard."
In bowls the lead is "the man" because getting the bowls to the head early on determines how much pressure the other teammates will have to saddle.
"I'm very comfortable at No2 because I'm not skilled enough to three and skip at open level, although just out of junior level I could do it."
Just as one doesn't grasp golf in five minutes or five years, getting a handle on bowls is no different.
"If you had said to me as little as six years ago [that I was going to play bowls] I probably would have laughed at you," Doyle says.
He considers himself fortunate that some of his former golfing buddies are adept at bowls so the transition was flawless.
"They took me into their teams and, you might say, tolerated me while I tried to learn this game."
On reflection, he suspects bowls offers more of an element of luck than golf.
"I mean, I know you can get a golf ball bounce off a tree and fall back into a fairway or kick a mound and kick left.
"In bowls, you learn very quickly to accept, particularly when you're playing one and two in fours, that you can be putting bowls around the kitty all day and somebody will just come along and hit a bowl along the side and come into the head to take away good shots so they all count for nothing in the end."
He labels Havelock North "a super club" as it prepares for its centennial celebrations on Labour Day weekend.
"In six years I'm even on the bowling committee, so it's a very enjoyable sport."
He practises, especially through summer, for half an hour, four times a week.
"I do miss playing golf. There's no mistake about that," he says, "quietly and slowly easing away from fulltime golf as I get older".
"My work is still my passion so I'm still as equally passionate about coaching golf as I've ever been," says Doyle, who coaches from Golflands and Hill Country Estate where wife Mary scored a hole in one on the final night of the twilight competition.
