Lawn Bowls / Kiryat Ono and Jerusalem earn top second round honors

The second round of the Wingate Fives was played off at the weekend at Netanya, ending on a day of mixed fortunes with honors shared in the day's 16 games of singles, pairs, triples and fours. With no full house scored, the best of good fortunes went to Kiryat Ono and Jerusalem, each of whom won three of their four games.

Ramat Gan, which in the first round had won all four games, managed only two wins together with Ra'anana, Savion and Ramat Hasharon. One win each went to Haifa and Netanya.

With two points allocated for each win, Ramat Gan still lead the overall log with 12 points, followed by Kiryat Ono with 10, and then eight points each for Haifa, Ra'anana, Savion and Jerusalem. Ramat Hasharon have six, leaving Netanya bottom-logged with four points.

Kiryat Ono did well to record their three wins and were in fact unlucky to miss out on a full house when their pairs side of Eli Naveh and Israel Salto lost their game on a tie-break to Ramat Hasharon's Yehuda Bar-On and Maurice Lavin. Their wins were recorded in the singles when Eli Naveh beat Ramat Gan's Boaz Marcus, and Yehuda Amitai's triples and fours teams respectively beat Ramat Gan and Jerusalem.

But full credit must be accorded to Jerusalem for coming through with three wins, although all three with critical tie-breakers. Although one of Israel's smaller clubs, their six-up squad comprises five stalwarts, Tony Babot, Berel Koseff, Norman Abrahamson, Motty Dreyfus and Haim Deri, who year after year make their presence felt among Israel's top rankers - this year again so, with the sixth member of their side, newcomer Boaz Leicht in his first year of playing. Deri won his singles against Ra'anana's Israel Meushar to record his second win, while the triples team beat Haifa and the pairs won against Ra'anana.

In other singles games, Ramat Hasharon's Yehuda Bar-On recorded his second win when he beat Netanya's Selwyn Arenson, while Haifa's Harry Katz also won for the second time against Savion's Amnon Kossovsky.

Ramat Gan's pairing of Boaz Marcus and Danny Slodovnik beat Savion and are the only unbeated pairs side, while in the triples only the Savion trio of Eliyahu Sason, Avi Ashkanazi and Eli Sofer have won both their games. In the fours three teams are unbeaten. The Savion side of Sason, Ezra Babu, Ashkanazi and Sofer, the Ra'anana side of Colin Silberstein, Gerald Sacks, Gordon Silberstein and Denis Phillips, and the Ramat Gan side of Yair Bekier, Rami Oron, Arye Kremer and Chaim Shneider.

With the eight clubs in the competition divided into two sections of four each, next week's third round will determine the section winners in each of the disciplines to contest the finals on the following weekend. The women's tournament, which was scheduled for Haifa, was abandoned under heavy downpours of rain.