Bowls: Taradale linchpin Louise Fitness helps claim Tauranga fours crown

Louise Fitness will be the first to admit she perhaps hasn't devoted as much time as she would have liked to bowls last year.

That's because Fitness has been out with fellow adroit bowler and husband Lloyd regularly frequenting the trout fishing mecca of Taupo.

But that is going to change for Fitness now. Out go the rod, reel, line and lure. She'll be rolling out the mat and delivering at the manicured lawns of Bowls Taradale more often now after joined a composite team of Reen Stratford (skip from Aramoho BC, Whanganui) and the Auckland pair of Helen Blick and Alison Rennie (Carlton Cornwall Bowling Club) to claim the top division title of the Tauranga Combined Clubs Women's Open Fours on Wednesday.

"I got in because I know some lovely ladies around the bowling circuit at various tournaments," says Fitness, a Taradale member of eight years who claimed her maiden crown at that fours event.

Stratford, who has national bragging rights, had invited Fitness for the three-day tournament where 32 teams played six, 14 end games, with a two-hour time limit, before they were grouped into three divisions.

The victorious composite side clinched nine victories out of as many games. They beat a Robyn Mathews-Hunts (skip) outfit from Tauranga 20-8 in their final match at Matua BC.

Fitness is now off to the national fours championship, to be staged in Tauranga again, from late next month into early March.

However, Blick will make way for a more lawn-savvy Linda Ralph who will come in as lead with the authority of an Auckland representative.

Ironically she had played against her composite teammates but not alongside them.

"When they had asked me to go to the national fours, Reen Stratford suggested it would be a good idea if we played in the top division beforehand just to get used to each other."

Fitness, the 2016 NZ pairs champion, says Stratford is New Zealand champ Peter Bellis' partner as well as an elite player in her own right.

"I was very honoured to be asked, if you get what I mean, because she's very good and won New Zealand titles and is way up there in the bowling fraternity."

She reckons their don't-argue performance this week came on the sobering platform of mutual respect and recognition of how each of them brought different skills to the mix.

"We just melded so well on the bowling green and off it."

Fitness played two although she assumes the mantle of skip at her club. Her new portfolio, a position she isn't accustomed to, demands drawing bowls to the head and being on call in case the lead misses. They won $350 each for their efforts.

"It's a role I so enjoyed in just being a team member and just bowling as good as I could."

Oh, and a laughing Fitness says, Stratford is the far better skip, a "super person" who directs when winning comes down to differentials.

While sensing they were in with a chance, the victors knew their rivals demanded nothing short of bringing their A game.