Bowls’ golden era was bigger than darts with maverick Tony Allcock and pipe-smoking ‘absolute killer’ Dave Bryant

WITH a pipe dangling from his mouth and firmly fixed stare down the green, Dave Bryant cut one of the most striking characters in sport in the late 70s and 80s.

He dominated the world of bowls - winning multiple world titles in the singles and pairs competitions, as the smoke and smell of his Holland House tobacco drifted around his opponents.

Bryant and partner Tony Allcock were the dominant force in an era where bowls was more popular than darts from the late 1970s through to the 1980s and 1990s.

Forget Eric Bristow or Jocky Wilson, these two were the real deal.

'David the Goliath'

Christened the greatest lawn bowler of all-time, Bryant dominated the sport between 1966 and 1988.

In the singles game, he won three world indoor bowls titles and three outdoors.

And he could have gone down in Commonwealth Games history to be the first person to win four consecutive gold medals, if the programme hadn't altered in 1966 in Kingston, Jamaica, when bowls was taken off the events list.

His pipe-smoking persona made him stand out from the crowd, although it wasn't always lit and was sometimes gripped tightly through his teeth as a concentration aid.

He did, admittedly get through about 50g of tobacco a day, until quitting the professional bowls circuit in 1992.

Bryant's image made him TV gold for BBC execs, who favoured bowls over the beer-swilling and chain-smoking worlds of darts and snooker.

He won the first of his three World Indoor Championships in 1979, delivering what many still call the greatest bowl of all time with his final throw.

Then in 1988, from the jaws of defeat, he recorded a last-gasp victory in the World Outdoor Singles Championship final in New Zealand against a stunned Willie Wood.

Part of what made him such a difficult customer to beat was his steely determination and not knowing when he was beaten.

"David had a uniqueness of inner strength above any individual in the game," his playing partner Allcock said after he passed away in 2020, aged 88.

"He was 100 per cent focused on the job in hand – call it blinkered if you like – but nothing would deter him. He could laugh with the opponent and then immediately stand on the mat and deliver an absolute killer of a bowl."

Speaking about that remarkable win over Wood in '88, Allcock added: "Willie played the better bowls on that day but David, true to form, never gave up hope.

"He held on to a thread that was so fragile it was almost invisible."

'Golden era'

His major run of world titles was televised on terrestrial television throughout the 1980s, in what was a golden era for the sport.

Bryant received an MBE and a CBE for his time ruling the green.

However, sponsorships and cash prizes weren't enough to give him the riches he deserved - the bowls prize money in 2024 still only stands at £50,000, ten-times smaller than darts' top prize.

Instead, he supplemented his income as a teacher at St Andrew’s junior school in the seaside town of Clevedon, North Somerset, and later at the College of St Paul and St Mary in Cheltenham, before running a sports shop in Bristol.

When he retired from the sport in the 1990s, so did his famous pipe.

"I was quite a heavy smoker, using up to 50g of tobacco every day,” he said.

"I suppose it became a ritual that gave me time to think. But when I retired from competitive bowls my wife, Ruth, said it was time I gave it up, and so I did."

Scotsman Willie Wood, an equally as impressive personality and MBE awardee, summed it up perfectly.

"Guys like David Bryant and me, we had the best of the bowls."