Two of Auckland's promising younger bowlers, Kevin Craft and Gary Breckon, were surprise winners of the Rawhiti Club's Pat Campbell Memorial pairs tournament yesterday.
In the final, helped by a five on the 15th end, the Henderson duo gained an 18-12 win over sentimental favourites Kevin Hickland and John Carruthers.
The sentiment arose from the fact that Hickland and Carruthers, as members of the host club, had more of an involvement with Campbell, the Rawhiti club stalwart who helped start this tournament but died suddenly late last year.
When they shot away to a 5-1 lead it seemed as if Hickland and Carruthers would do their old mate proud, but the consistency of the draw of Craft and Breckon proved too much.
Though little known outside Auckland, Craft and Breckon have been among the game's emerging talents. Craft has represented the Waikato and Auckland centres at academy level and Breckon, with another Henderson player, Steve Cox, won two Auckland centre titles last season.
The Craft-Breckon and Hickland-Carruthers pairings were upset semifinals winners over the Wellington-North Harbour duo of Rob Ashton and Brent Turner and last year's champions, Henderson's Mike Farac and Cox.
And to win, the semifinalists each had to recover from huge deficits.
After 11 ends Hickland trailed Cox 13-6, but three consecutive twos and a four on the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th ends, with Carruthers effective in the middle, saw the match go to an extra end.
Similarly, Craft and Breckon looked well out of it against the smooth combination of Ashton and Turner and after eight ends they were down 12-3.
They still looked to have little show coming to the final stages, but, inexplicably, Ashton and Turner dropped a four and a three on the 15th and 16th ends to lose 19-16.
In the Manurewa pairs, the four semifinalists to play off today are Keith Slight (Wanganui), Ken Walker (Dunedin), Sean Johnson (Wanganui) and last year's winning skip Maurice Symes with fellow Cantabrian Kelvin Scott.
Slight and partner Ray Park entered the playoffs with a dramatic win, pipping Canterbury's Colin Lowery on the differential by winning their match 24-7.
Meanwhile, Ray Menzies won yesterday's Browns Bay triples invitation final, skipping Northlanders Graham and Colin Wintle to a 20-15 win over the Wellington trio of John Earles, Howard Ivory and Peter Batchelor.
