Bowls: New green cultivates hopes

Patsy Fraser plays a delivery during yesterday's Melbourne Cup Triples tournament on the new green at her Kia Toa club in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor

David Harding has labelled the Kia Toa Bowling Club's facilities as "possibly the best in the Bay."

As club captain, Harding can show a little bias if you'll excuse the pun, particularly in the wake of the recent completion of the $230,000 TigerTurf Greenweave green. The official opening of the Royston Hospital-sponsored green will be held on Saturday.

"We'll get 15 years out of this green. Combine it with the one put in six years ago which we expect to get another 10 years out of and we've got a huge asset for the Bay. We expect to get a few Bowls Hawke's Bay centre events in the future now," Harding said.

He predicted the greens will see the club's 110-strong membership grow as well as the club's number of rep players, something else Harding was happy to boast about.

"We've got Patsy Fraser who is a Hawke's Bay senior women's rep, five Hawke's Bay junior women's reps and three Hawke's Bay junior men's team players."

Yesterday's 18-team Melbourne Cup mixed triples was one of the first tournaments to be played on the new green. Fraser played two and Linda Sowersby lead in a Robbie Burns-skipped team from the Kia Toa club which finished third.

The three members of the winning host club team, skip Garry Houlahan and the husband and wife pair of two Noel and lead Elaine Congdon, are all residents of the Summerset in the Orchard Retirement Village - sponsor of yesterday's tournament. A Havelock North trio of skip Graeme Fulford, two Brian Johnson and lead Bill Buchan finished second in a repeat of their finish at last month's open triples tournament at the Bluff Hill club.

Another triples tournament will be played as part of Saturday's opening celebrations for the new green which was a six-week project. Former New Zealand rep and Commonwealth Games medallist, club life member Katie Portas, will be among the guests.

Portas, 79, won gold in the visually-impaired bowls at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada. She carried the New Zealand flag at the closing ceremony and asked discus silver medallist Beatrice Faumuina to accompany her.

Swimmer Danyon Loader, who went on to become a double Olympic gold medallist, couldn't carry the flag because he had to make a mad dash with other elite swimmers to the World Championships, so chef de mission Dave Gerrard asked Portas, the only Kiwi female gold medallist if she wanted another woman to accompany her.

Portas no longer plays but regularly assists club members.