A modest champion

GARY Ellis, clutching the Oceanico Masters trophy, believes he has some way to be ranked alongside some of the sport’s former stars.

GARY Ellis has won every major title crown green bowls has to offer and banked tens of thousands of pounds in the process.

So it comes as a huge surprise that bowling’s number one player reckons he doesn’t match up to the sport’s former stars.

“I have never taken the view that I am that good, I really haven’t,” he admitted.

“For the first time last year I kept records of every game I played and I lost 53 times. That’s a lot of games.

“I don’t consider myself unbeatable. You look at that and say ‘I am not that good, it’s not as though I never get beat’.

“I have never thought of myself as someone anywhere near as good as Brian Duncan or Noel Burrows at their best.

“If you watch Graeme Wilson (Ellis’s main challenger as the game’s number one) he looks like a natural player, I don’t.”

This amazing modesty from the Nimble Nook and Tonge player flies in the face of his astonishing achievements on the bowling greens of England.

Ellis is rapidly approaching more than 100 major titles, has won the prestigious Waterloo Handicap three times and the televised Oceanico Masters in Portugal on the only two occasions it has been held.

Ellis enjoyed another superb season in 2010, the highlights being that triumph in Portugal, victory in the Waterloo Spring Handicap and other major wins in the Fleetwood Festival and extremely valuable Hill Crest Classic.

Ellis has a reputation for winning more tight games than anyone else at the top level. In landing this year’s Spring Waterloo, he won four matches 21-20.

When asked to explain his incredible success rate in photo finishes, he said: “Perhaps when the pressure is on, I am one of the guys more likely to play better rather than worse.”

Ellis will begin his 2011 open tournament campaign with the same tunnel vision with which he has approached others.

“Your starting point is to try to get off to a good start early season. That’s a big help,” he said.

“If you win one tournament early on you are liable to win three or four.

“Then, obviously, you are looking at the majors, really. The Spring Waterloo, the County Merit leading to the All-England, the Waterloo and Portugal.

“You do get a bit more focused for the real major competitions, but that’s only natural. Is a golfer more focused for a major than other tournaments? Of course he is.”

One chilling thought for Ellis’s future opponents is the 37-year-old’s determination to get even better.

“I lost 53 games last year and that’s what I will be thinking of at the start of next season.




The full version of this interview is in tonight’s Evening Chronicle and in online in the E-Chron (subscription required)