High Rollers Enjoy Life After 50 as Professional Alley Cats : Bowling: Trio from area, including two grandfathers, compete on senior tour.

Barry Gurney’s career was marked by jackhammers and flying pieces of concrete. Twenty-two years of noise, sweat and aching muscles.

When the City of Glendale dangled a gold wristwatch in front of him in 1992, Gurney jumped at early retirement. The chance to throw away his hard hat and start a career as a professional athlete arrived none too soon.

For more than 30 years, Jerry Dallum sat at a Stenotype machine in Los Angeles courtrooms while divorces were finalized and murder sentences delivered.

The daily stream of human strife took its toll on Dallum. But he dutifully recorded every word--until the day finally came when he could leave those courts for good and head for the alleys.

Ray Elias still puts on a suit each day and carries a briefcase filled with contracts and brochures. His life is telephones, airplanes and rental cars.

And by day’s end, he has usually closed a deal. Elias is a salesman.

At 53, he keeps working. No commission check is too trivial for a man who plans to support himself as a professional athlete.

Gurney, Dallum and Elias all are middle-aged professional bowlers, card-carrying members of the Professional Bowlers Assn. who compete on the PBA Senior Tour.

Two of the three are grandfathers, but all have been called “rookie.” They gladly accept the label--despite their Hall of Fame ages. After all, you can’t play this tour until you’ve been around for half a century.

“I couldn’t wait to turn 50 so I could compete with my heroes,” said Gurney, 52, of West Hills. He had dreamed of playing with the likes of PBA Hall of Famers Dick Weber, Earl Anthony and Carmen Salvino since his early teens.

“Most men dread turning 50,” he said. “I was counting the days. Now I’m with the guys I followed all those years. We go out to dinner.”

After finishing 17th on the Senior PBA money list as a rookie in 1992, Gurney retired as a heavy equipment operator.

Dallum, 56, of Chatsworth picked up his first bowling ball at 40. Elias of Northridge was a top bowler at 21 but quit playing competitively for nearly two decades while he raised four sons.

But both have been smitten by the lure of the professional spotlight.

And so have thousands of others as the Senior PBA has grown from one event in 1981 to a 14-stop tour.

The stepladder finals of each senior event are televised. And the cash prizes aren’t bad for guys living on a retirement income.

Gene Stus, a former quality-control specialist for General Motors, made $62,725 in 11 stops last year. Former Thousand Oaks resident John Handegard, a onetime clerk at an Oregon lumber mill, moved within $10,000 this week of clearing $200,000 for his six-year career after capturing the only Senior PBA tournament in California: the Pacific Cal Bowl Open in Lakewood.

Stus and Handegard are two of the sport’s newest superstars. Like Gurney, Dallum and Elias, they represent a new breed on the tour. They never played the regular PBA circuit; instead, they spent their prime years playing local night leagues or not playing at all while they worked 9-to-5 jobs and raised families.

Of these players, Handegard is enjoying the greatest success. In six years on the tour, he has won seven tournaments--a record he shares with an American Bowling Congress Hall of Famer, Teata Semiz.

But seven of the top 10 money winners this year entering the Cal Bowl also had never played the regular tour. The five players who reached Cal Bowl’s televised final Thursday were unknowns at the pro level before they turned 50.

Gurney and Hobo Boothe of Canoga Park qualify as part of this new wave of players. They travel and play all tournaments, often picking up a paycheck.

Boothe, 56, a manufacturing supervisor who was laid off three years ago, earned $16,490 on the tour last year and already has “cashed” in seven of eight events this year. Gurney, while less consistent than Boothe, made a splash his 1992 rookie season by winning the Lansing (Mich.) Open and earning $13,390.

After years of tearing apart sidewalks, curbs and gutters, Gurney realizes he hasn’t exactly hit a gold mine. So far this year, his expenses outweigh his earnings, $8,000 to $3,300. To cut costs, he makes cross-country trips in a van and sleeps at highway rest stops instead of motels.

“Some of the guys fly,” he said. said. “I did that last year because I won and made TV a couple of times. To get on TV is where the money is.”

Gurney is sponsored by bowling manufacturers who donate equipment. The only time he gets money is when he uses their equipment on television. Then he gets a bonus.

While Gurney will play every tournament this year, the vast majority of the 270 who entered the Cal Bowl Open--and, indeed, most tournaments--are like Dallum and Elias. They’re gamblers. They play for one or two stops, hoping to hit the jackpot or at least win enough cash to keep going.

Typically, these players have success in local leagues and can’t wait to slay the giants when the Senior PBA swings into town.

Many come home with their tails between their legs, however--disheartened not so much by the competition as the unpredictable lane conditions that turn strikes at the neighborhood alley into spares on the tour.

Strikes to spares, spares to open frames, high hopes to low scores.

This is Elias’ story.

“I joined the PBA last year and I went to their first stop in (Clearwater, Fla.),” he said. “I just missed cashing.”

So he entered the next tournament in Tulsa, Okla. And, well. . . .

“It was nice to be there. That’s all I can say,” he said.

Elias thought he could recapture the magic he displayed 32 years ago, when he carried a 220 average in his Air Force bowling league. But after averaging 174.78 in qualifying and finishing 249th at Cal Bowl, Elias said he might scrap plans to sponsor himself on the tour.

“I wanted to see if I could make it,” he said. “I put a lot of practice time in, and I was looking to cash and win enough money to go on to the next one. This may be my last hurrah.”

Dallum’s story is a contrast.

Unlike Elias, Dallum was a 40-year-old couch potato.

“My wife and I had to do something,” Dallum said, flashing back 16 years. “We were sitting at home watching TV every night. The courthouse started a league called the Courthouse Mixers.

“I didn’t know what a bowling ball looked like, but I fell in love with the sport,” he said.

Since retiring as a court typist, Dallum has played approximately 30 Senior PBA tournaments. He has cashed only once--two years ago at the Showboat Lanes in Las Vegas--but tournament officials nullified his $700 prize because he missed the pre-tournament equipment weigh-in.

“I’m new at this business,” Dallum said. But he’s also encouraged, especially after finishing 105th with a 197.67 average in Lakewood this week.

“I learn something every time I go out there,” he said. “So I’m going to keep it up.”

Fourteen area bowlers competed at Cal Bowl. Most prominent among the bunch was Ron Winger of Tarzana, but Bill Stempke of Moorpark, another PBA newcomer, was the biggest surprise.

Winger, 51, has enjoyed instant success on the senior circuit after several winless years on the regular PBA Tour. He’s captured two titles this season and became only the second player in ABC history to score 300 in a championship game as he claimed the Wyoming Valley Open in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on July 1.

At Cal Bowl, Winger fell five pins short of qualifying for match play, and finished 27th for $955.

Stempke, 53, pro shop owner at Mission Hills Bowl who was playing only his second Senior PBA event this year, qualified in a ninth-place tie in Lakewood and appeared on the threshold of a big payday when he knocked off Handegard, 248-236, in match play.

But as match play wore on, Stempke appeared to wear out. His scores dropped sharply from the 215.17 he averaged during qualifying.

He faltered to 21st by tournament’s end, winning $1,450. Handegard, in turn, surged to the championship and took home an $18,000 check.

“My intention is to make the show and win the tournament,” Stempke said. “I don’t like it when I don’t bowl well.”

Fortunes can change quickly in bowling.

Gurney, who was 51st at Cal Bowl, rocketed skyward in 1992 but is trying to avoid a psychological free-fall as his bowling budget deficit approaches $5,000.

“It’s a mind-boggling game and I’m beginning to wonder about my ability,” Gurney confessed. “I probably did so well last year I thought it was too easy. I didn’t know about equipment, I didn’t know about anything.

“Now, maybe I know too much.”

Contrary to common perception, there is more to bowling than rolling a straight ball.

For starters, a player needs about 10 balls of varying weights and surface textures to contend with unpredictable lane conditions. Lanes are covered with a lubricant that will act like an oil slick, jettisoning the slightest errant shot gutter-ward.

“We have no clue what the ball’s going to do by looking at the surface of the lane,” Handegard said. “It’s a great guessing game. Over the years--and with all the experience I have--there are times I feel I’ve had an edge.

“But master it? No way.”

The technical side of the game can’t be underestimated, said Handegard, and it is enough to send some bowlers running to the nearest therapist. But Winger offered some encouragement.

“You really have to make a commitment and bowl at least half the season,” he said. “To bowl one or two events, you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. But you can adjust pretty quickly if you just stay out there.”

Aside from claiming to be America’s largest participant sport, bowling is a science--for which Gurney, the equipment operator, Dallum, the court reporter, and Elias, the salesman, have no training.

“Taking an early retirement to compete with these guys was worth it to me,” Gurney said.

“But if it doesn’t work out, I know I can get another job somewhere.”