Our golden wonder
How Alex ‘Tattie’ Marshall became a Commonwealth Games legend (just don’t scoff at his training regime)
IN the world of Scottish sporting endeavour, Alex ‘Tattie’ Marshall casts a bigger shadow than most. For starters, there is that unmistakeably chunky silhouette, like a Jersey Royal atop a well-baked Maris Piper, which would doubtless struggle to clear the bar set by the more toned torsos of elite athletes.
But, while he may not possess the sinewy muscularity of his track and field teammates, Marshall has outperformed them all to become our most successful Commonwealth competitor of all time.
Forget Wells, Hoy and Fachie, move over McColgan and Wilkie. It has fallen to the unlikeliest of heroes, a portly 51-year-old bowler, to better their accomplishments with a record fifth gold medal at the Games on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Marshall, of course, is no ordinary bowler. Four years ago, he became one of the faces of Glasgow 2014 after his antics in beating an English team in a tense semi-final in front of a partisan home crowd.
His exuberant ‘get-it-up-ye’ celebrations became a social media sensation. Now, he is a bona fide sporting legend, the ‘Lionel Messi of lawn bowls’ with more gold round his neck than a New York rapper.
‘I don’t think anything can quite top what happened in Glasgow, winning two gold medals in your own back yard in front of home support,’ he said. ‘But it was extra-special for different reasons on the Gold Coast.
‘Being the first person ever to win five gold medals for Scotland, I wasn’t thinking too much of that while I was competing because that just adds a bit of pressure.’
Fears of crumbling under pressure have rarely troubled Marshall. And yet, his record fifth medal almost did not happen after the tension got to him in Scotland’s semi-final, again against England. It prompted him to do something that would doubtless have traditionalists choking on their briar pipes – he called in a sports psychologist.
‘It’s not something bowlers normally use,’ he said, ‘but I did consult one near the end of the event. I had a bit of an ankle injury and when I was delivering the bowl my mind went to my foot all the time thinking that something worse was going to happen, that I would damage it.’
HE had ‘the yips’, a mental block that causes involuntary wrist spasms most common among golfers as they try to putt. ‘It was the semi-final and I really struggled to bowl properly, although we still managed to win somehow,’ he said. ‘Afterwards, I sat down with Team Scotland psychologist Simon Petrie and he helped break the link in my head.
‘He told me as soon as I felt the pain I had to think of something else, something nice.
‘I normally like to chase my bowls up, so he encouraged me to go for it and once I started to run and felt no pain, everything would be back to normal. It worked!’
Even then, Marshall almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in another final, holding his shaven head in his hands as his disastrous last bowl opened the door for the Australians to sneak the win. In the end, the home side messed it up, too, handing gold to the Scottish men’s fours of Marshall, Ronnie Duncan, Derek Oliver and Paul Foster. Despite the relief, there was no repeat of that Glasgow celebration: ‘I probably played two of the best bowls of my career in Glasgow. The celebration was an instant thing, like a footballer scoring a goal in extra time.
‘But it showed people a different side to bowls – the game needs to be a bit livelier anyway.’
His five golds have inched this veteran of six Games beyond former Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells and paracyclist Neil Fachie to the top of Scotland’s Commonwealth medals table.
Marshall suggests there is little to be gained from comparing champions from different disciplines – ‘apples and pears’ is how Tattie puts it. Appearances are frequently deceptive – even his nickname has nothing to do with a fondness for carbohydrates but a childhood inability to pronounce the word ‘Daddy’. He said: ‘We are not the same kind of athletes as the swimmers and the rugby sevens players but few sports play for five hours a day like we do. A lot of the guys do gym work. The physios set us targets, I walk up to 25 miles a week to keep in shape.’
He even listens to motivational music before matches. His favourite used to be Flying Without Wings by Westlife, which divided opinion among teammates.
‘I got a bit of stick about that,’ he said. This time around it was Australian singer John Farnham’s power ballad You’re The Voice.
It is hard to imagine the average club bowler in their spotless whites and sensible shoes resorting to psychologists, nutritionists and physios to give them a competitive advantage.
Then again, Tattie is unlikely to be rushing to Weight Watchers. He said: ‘I lost two stone before one of the World Championships about ten years ago and my delivery totally went. It was a nightmare; I was wobbling my bowls and lost it. I lost the weight too quickly and was bending more than I normally bend, which affected my whole delivery.’
THIS taught him a valuable lesson. While performance athletes may measure out each microgram of carb and protein, Tattie tucks in to his wife Diane’s home cooking.
‘We have the odd takeaway of a Saturday, or we will go out for a meal and my wife cooks through the week,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to have some enjoyment in life.’
His 46-year-old wife, herself no mean bowler, is the rock upon whom his triumphs are built. They met 26 years ago, when Marshall handed out awards at Mrs Marshall’s bowling club, on the night she scooped all the ladies’ prizes.
Since then, the couple have been inseparable. They are now on a post-Games holiday around Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, where Marshall is catching up with the many friends made during a career that almost led him to emigrate Down Under nearly 20 years ago.
In the early 2000s, there was little money in the Scottish game and he was on the verge of giving up because it cost too much to compete at top-level events.
‘I said I might give it up for good and spoke about it with my wife,’ he said. ‘She said it would be a bit silly giving something up that I was good at.’
Soon after, he played some games with a team in Australia’s professional leagues, which led to the offer of a full-time coaching job: ‘I love the country but it’s hard to just get up and go to the other end of the world. I still get asked. Maybe in five years’ time I’ll retire and we’ll head over.’
His ties to Scottish bowls run deep, though. His grandfather and father, both Robert, introduced him to bowls at the age of eight while he was a pupil at Edinburgh’s Tynecastle High School.
Young Tattie proved a chip off the old block. By the time he was ten he had won an under-16 Edinburgh schoolboys’ event.
‘I was quite fortunate that the bowling club was right across from the school,’ he said. ‘A lot of the older guys at the club seemed to spot something in me and suggested I might have a future.
‘Hearing that when you’re a young laddie just makes you want to practise and practise.’
After leaving school, he worked as a salesman with various bowls manufacturers, allowing him to take time off to compete. He first struck Commonwealth gold in Manchester in 2002 and followed it up in Melbourne in 2006 before scoring double gold in Glasgow in 2014. He also has seven world outdoor titles and 12 world indoor titles to his name.
Other honours have flowed in. He was made an MBE for services to bowls in 2007 and the East Lothian Indoor Bowling Arena near Edinburgh was renamed the Alex Marshall Arena in 2015. He was also asked to carry the flag at the closing ceremony to Glasgow 2014. ‘It brought a tear to my eye when they told me,’ he said.
As a flag-bearer for the sport he loves, Marshall believes its future looks bright. After the men’s success in Glasgow, sportscotland agreed to plough £420,000 into encouraging younger people to take up the game.
But there are still no full professionals in the Scottish game: Tattie has started his own company, Alex Marshall Sports Limited in Edinburgh; Paul Foster runs a taxi firm in Troon; Ronnie Duncan is an IT specialist for Aberdeen Asset Management; and Derek Oliver is a civil servant.
All hope to be in the mix for Birmingham 2022. ‘I’m still as competitive as ever and want to play at the highest level,’ says Marshall. And who would bet against him? Tattie’s on a roll.