Levin Bowling Club president Les Galloway on the new Tiger Turf artificial green.
Levin Bowling Club president Les Galloway on the new Tiger Turf artificial green.
Levin Bowling Club is set to open a second artificial green.
The finishing touches are being applied to the new Tiger Turf green, which is expected to open for play after an official opening ceremony on August 5.
Levin Bowling Club president Les Galloway said the decision to invest ina new artificial all-weather green would future-proof the club and allow it to stage larger tournaments all year round with a degree of certainty.
Finishing touches are applied to the outside of the new artificial green at Levin Bowling Club.
The $315,000 new green was funded in part by the club’s financial reserves, and through community grants.
Galloway said it was laid to international standards, and an underground drainage system and pump would ensure surface water disappeared quickly.
Levin Bowling Club was the first club in town to have an artificial green, in 1999. Given its practicability, it made sense for the club to go completely artificial, especially given a spike in the costs of managing grass greens and the difficulty of sourcing sprays that were no longer in the market, he said.
“It was becoming uneconomic. The executive made this decision to future-proof the club,” he said.
The beauty of an artificial green was that it would ensure the certainty of competition and allowed bowls to be played all year round.
The club engaged specialist company Tiger Turf, which recently laid a new artificial surface at the Halliwell Hockey Turf in Levin. Local contractors were employed to remove 450 cubic metres of soil, or 200 truckloads.
The club was in a position to invest in new initiatives due to a special fund set up by previous committees for investment in infrastructure, he said.
“The club was forward thinking then and has been forward thinking now in putting this new turf down,” he said.
Galloway, who is in his second term as president, said the new turf was estimated to last 25 years and allowed the club a degree of certainty in staging tournaments and club galas, doubling its capacity from eight lanes to 16.
“It’s fantastic for the club, for the town, and for the community,” he said.
“So many people want to play bowls.”
Club membership had been steadily growing and there was always room for new members to join. Galloway said the sport had huge potential in attracting more younger players, especially at secondary school level.
Levin Bowling Club stages a hugely popular business house summer league on Thursday nights that has a waiting list of teams wanting to enter.
