KEY POINTS:
For someone who retired from the sport a couple of years ago, Mike Kernaghan is getting huge enjoyment from the national bowls championships in Dunedin.
Back in the city where he grew up, he and David Archer, from the Taieri club, advanced to the semifinals of the men's pairs after winning their two matches yesterday with ridiculous ease, 19-1 and 19-6.
Auckland-based Kernaghan, the assistant chief executive at Soccer New Zealand, announced his retirement from bowls after winning back-to-back singles titles out of the Kaikorai club in 2001 and 2002.
But the lure of competition was strong and last year he began to play at the Onehunga club in Auckland.
The opportunity to spend Christmas with his family in Dunedin prompted him to enter the nationals.
"The nationals have a special charm about them and the opportunity to turn out in my old stamping ground was too good to resist," he said.
"David and I have combined pretty well on greens I relate well to.
"We'll see what happens from here."
In Thursday's semifinals, Kernaghan and Archer will take on Andre Smith (Havelock) and Lloyd Gallop (Blenheim), while Paul Girdler (Leith) and Sean O'Neill (Kia Toa) take on Kerry Becks (Kaiapoi) Darren Redway (Rangiora) in the other semifinal.
Smith, a 34-year-old factory worker, and Gallop, claim 43 Marlborough centre titles between them.
Girdler, who is in his early 40s and the winner of four world championship bronze medals, hopes to get back into the national team.
"There's no better way to impress the selectors than to win a national title," he said after he and O'Neill, from the Kia Toa club in Timaru, comfortably accounted for Malaysia's Aswan Mohd Shauhani 23-5 in their quarter-final.
But the performance that gave Girdler greatest satisfaction came when his pair edged out Rowan Brassey and Tony Grantham 21-17.
Brassey was a national representative from 1982 to 2006 and is one of the country's most accomplished players.
The women's singles final on Thursday will be between national representative Mary Campbell and a player 31 years her junior, Malaysia's Nor Fidrah Noh.
Campbell, a 51-year-old information service contractor from Taupo, completed a remarkable sequence of victories when she toppled the top-ranking Malaysian, Siti Zalina Ahmad, who has won two Commonwealth Games gold medals in singles, 21-19, in the quarter-finals.
That followed victories on Sunday against Nor Shafeenaz Yahya (Malaysia) and fellow internationals Sharon Sims and Serena Matthews.
Campbell went on to down Beckenham's Jan Philpott, a fourth-year bowler, 21-14 in the semifinal after the scores had been locked at 9-all after 12 ends.
Noh, at 20, is the youngest member of the Malaysian national squad and fresh up from their Development team.
She was too steady in her semifinal for Hokonui's Adele Greenfield.
Post-section play in men's singles and women's pairs is scheduled for today and tomorrow, with all singles and pairs finals being staged at Bowls Dunedin headquarters at Logan Park on Thursday.
- NZPA
