The national bowls championships are less than three weeks away and the field is up on last year.
The tournament will be played in Dunedin, based at the Taieri Bowling Club.
About 700 bowlers will line up for the men’s and women’s tournaments, which start with section play on December 29.
Section play goes for five days before switching to post-section play on January 3.
Bowls New Zealand events manager Helen Stallard said entries were slightly up on last year in Taranaki. She said about 50% of the entries were from Otago bowlers.
The tournament will be played on all of the main greens in Dunedin and will also venture south for games at Waihola and Milton. The finals will be played at Taieri Bowling Club.
Singles, pairs and fours will be played.
Players are coming from Australia and a young bowler is also heading over from Canada.
She said the event was always well supported in Dunedin.
To get through section play, bowlers will require three or four wins in singles while in pairs and fours, four out of six wins will get teams through to post-section play, when it becomes sudden death.
The finals are due to be played on the weekend starting January 6 and can be played through to the Monday.
It can be a tough logistical task to get all games completed some days, as players in some teams may be busy still playing in another format.
Taranaki’s Dean Elgar will be back to defend his singles title, as will women’s singles champion Selina Goddard, of Auckland. Both went to the world champion of champions singles in New South Wales last month and performed well.
Elgar finished second and Goddard was third.
Other bowlers such as Ali Forsyth, Gary Lawson and Mike Kernaghan are competing. Angela Boyd and Jo Edwards have entered the women’s singles.
The hot weather of the past weeks has led to plenty of watering of greens and they should be in tip-top condition.
The Westpac Bowls Stadium will be a back-up should wet weather curtail the event.
The championships were last in Dunedin in 2013-14, which marked 100 years since the first event. Poor weather impacted on those championships.
