Hot weather makes play difficult

Press, 28 December 1988, Page 31

Hot weather makes play difficult

Blistering hot weather on the greens of Christchurch yesterday and fohn-like winds made play difficult for competitors as they bowled their way towards the final of the Canterbury Provincial Bowling Centre’s Christmas fours. The conditions may not have been responsible, but there were some surprise early results from which some teams will certainly not be able to recover.

Notable among these was the Woolston Park team skipped by Tony Thomas, who last year shared the title as part of Peter Meier’s South Brighton four.

Thomas lost all three games yesterday and is all but out of the contest, needing four straight wins, with four games left in section play today.

Thomas lost to L. Beveridge (Darfield), 8-22, P. Remi (Burnside), 11-20 and C. Wheeler (Kaiapoi), 6-19, at the Sydenham club. His task of winning his remaining matches is not made exceptionally difficult because he faces teams which have yet to make their marks in the contest, but it is, nevertheless, a tall order. In the same section are two teams which must be consid-

ered among the most likely to get to the final. Bruce McNish (Spreydon), whose recent run of successes include winning the centre singles before Christmas, continued his run yesterday with three wins.

McNish beat A. Young (Papanui), 17-10, Beveridge 22-8 and Remi 14-9. Today he has only Sydenham’s Peter Collins who should trouble him, but neither of his other matches can be a foregone conclusion.

Also in that very competitive section is last year’s winning skip, South Brighton’s Peter Meier, but he has had a loss to detract from his two wins.

After losing to Remi first up, Meier beat Wheeler, 1816, and N. Falloon (Beckenham), 20-6. He will be looking to less trying conditions — as will most bowlers — for more certain results today. On the Christchurch Richmond green, G. Champion (Burnside) and L. Schafer (Redcliffs) each recorded three wins while a surprise from that area was the three losses of R. Rickard (Papanui). From the Canterbury clubs greens, W. Devine (Burnside) and W. Boyd (Papanui) also

had three wins. Two of Boyd's wins were very close, while Devine had two wins in which the scores suggested his team was barely tested.

Kaiapoi’s A. Griffin also had three wins on the Papanui Workingmen’s Club green, but P. Doig (Papanui) playing on adjacent rinks, suffered two losses, notably to A. Memory (Woolston WMC), who was another three winner.

At the same venue, S. Cretney (Sumner) was another name player to suffer the ignominy of three losses. At the Christchurch club, D. Hay (Burnside) and J. Saundercock (Linwood) both recorded three wins with B. Johns (Sumner) being beaten in his middle match by Saundercock.

The New Brighton greens were good to N. Kennedy (Papanui), allowing him to come through with three wins, but not so kind to W. Fiecken (Beckenham), who lost his final match to T. Coup (Kaiapoi) by two shots.

Section play will be completed today, with all teams having three further matches, while those in 14-team sections will have four.