BOWLS

            If you can roll a ball, you can play bowls. Everyone can play: young and old, men and women, the fit and the not so fit. It is the individual outdoor game that (1) ________  is a sport for all. What other sports can grandparents play on (2) ________ terms with their grandchildren? What other game is so simple that you could take it up today and be (3) ________  in the national championships tomorrow?

            Simple? Perhaps that's not the (4) ________  word. There are bowls players in their thousands who will tell you that, although bowls is a game that anyone can (5) ________   in five minutes, it takes a lifetime to (6) ________  it. They are the people who have (7) ________  a passionate interest in the game . (8) ________, for outsiders, bowls is another world, and a strange and puzzling one. They see a bowls game in (9) ________  and wonder what is going on.

            What the players are trying to do is easy to explain. Their (10) ________  is to roll their bowls, called woods, as near as possible to the little white ball, called the jack. If one of your bowls finishes nearer to the jack than your (11) ________ , you score one point and he or she scores nothing. If you have the two nearest, you score two, and (12) ________ . The skill (13) ________  in rolling a bowl that weighs around 2 kilos across about 40 metres so that it stops only a very short (14) ________  from the target is just as (15) ________  as the skills required in other sports.

1. A. exactly                        B. really                   C. precisely                          D. accurately
2. A. alike                            B. equal                   C. parallel                            D. matching
3. A. competing                   B. entering                C. getting                             D. going
4. A. right                            B. suitable               C. genuine                            D.just
5. A. catch on                      B.see through           C. find out                            D. pick up

6. A. manage                         B. tame                       C. master                               D. control

7. A. assembled                    B.  produced              C. developed                         D. grown
8. A. Besides                       B. Unlike                  C. However                         D. Although

9. A. performance                B. movement             C. practice                             D. action
10. A. point                         B. attempt                 C. scheme                            D. aim
11. A. competitor’s             B. opponent’s           C. contestant’s                     D. opposer’s
12. A. further                       B. so on                     C. moreover                         D. as follows

13. A. involved                     B. connected             C. relating                              D. belonging

14. A. distance                      B. extent                    C. range                                 D. length
15. A. respectable                B. impressive           C. appreciative                     D. favourable