Sixty-four top lawn bowlers from San Diego to San Francisco descended on the bowling green at Roxbury Park over the Labor Day weekend for the 51st Annual Walt Disney Tournament. Winning the three-day pairs competition was a team comprised of Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club stalwart Corey Vose and his partner Dean Warmington. At the end of three sessions of all-day lawn bowling, Vose and Warmington were tied with Anne Nunes (Newport Beach) and Bill Breult (Coronado), internationally known lawn bowlers and prior winners of the tournament, forcing a thrilling playoff won by Vose and Warmington by a single point.
Beverly Hills Mayor Bob Wunderlich presented the winners with the $1000 in prize money. Other prizes were awarded to the top eight teams.
Vose and Warmington will also have their names inscribed on a custom trophy crafted by Disney Studios. The trophy incorporates four wooden bowls used by Walt Disney as a member of the Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded him by President Lyndon Johnson. The three foot high wooden structure is topped off by a small white ball used in lawn bowling (a “jack”) with a statuette of a mischievous Mickey Mouse. The trophy is on display at Roxbury Park.
The Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club is one of the most iconic lawn bowling clubs in the U.S. Founded in 1929, one of the club’s most enthusiastic founder-members was Walt Disney. Today, the club consists of 70 members, most of them Beverly Hills residents, with ages ranging from the mid-20s to well into the nineties.
