KEY POINTS:
Prominent Henderson bowler Tony Garelja, who came close to death more than two years ago and has just started playing again, marked his return to the game with a top performance in the North Harbour premier triples tournament yesterday.
Garelja led for two former national champions, Ross Haresnape and Wally Marsic, as they swept into today's quarter-finals topping their section by winning all seven of their games to be the tournament's only unbeaten side.
"I've been away from the game for 2 1/2 years," Garelja said yesterday.
What was first diagnosed as a muscular problem turned out to be a serious illness, including pneumonia.
His first attempt at a serious game was in the recent Auckland centre pairs, but his accurate draw play yesterday and in the four games on Saturday showed he had lost little of his old skill.
The other highlight of the qualifying round-robin was the failure of national singles champion Tony Grantham and his Birkenhead team to make the final eight.
Even though in a strong side skipped by Don Trott and with centre gold star holder Colin Rogan, Grantham's lineup had a surprising struggle and in the last match were annihilated by an inexperienced Mairangi threesome skipped by Con Kater.
Kater and his front two, Brian Rogers and Des Lowe, have all just emerged from junior ranks and performed mightily to make the top eight.
Other section winners who qualified were defending champions, Carlton's Petar Sain and Brent Turner and their new lead, Scott Curran, Carlton's Nick Krajanic and Wayne Motu and Max Hamilton, Henderson's Steve Cox, Kevin Craft and Win Cozens, and Pt Chevalier's Ivan Zonich, Alf Dickens and Johnny Pocrnich.
Making the eight as the two best runners-up were Northlanders Ian Bowick, John Dunn and Gordon Bond and John Walker, Tony Marinkovich and Randell Watkins from the Harbour centre.
It was a fine decision in the case of both Zonich, who emerged from a section where there were three other five winners, and Walker, who edged out Warkworth's John Morgan on points aggregate over the seven games by just two shots.
In today's semifinals for the Manurewa invitation pairs South Island visitors dominate.
Terry and Jim Scott, from Dunedin, meet northerners Neville Scott and Mike Martinovich in one playoff and two other Otago products, Sean Scott and Steve Beel, meet Cantabrians Colin Lowery and Neville Poole in the other.
