Last weekend Bathurst City hosted section A of the Zone 4 Pairs Championships.
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To quality players had to have won their club's Pairs Championship.
Lithgow City Champions were Jeff Madden and Ian Townsend who received a bye in Round 1 of the Zone event.
Jeff and Ian were next drawn against Dubbo Railway's Jono Davis and Craig Jeffrey, which promised to provide a great match.
Davis, a multiple junior champion for Australia in previous years, with partner Jeffrey, were probably entitled to Championship favouritism.
The Lithgow pair were slow to start and conceded the first three ends to be down 0-5. Steady draw bowls saw Jeff and Ian pull the lead back, and by winning the following six ends go to a lead of 8-5.
Other than getting to a lead of 11-9 after 14 ends, the Dubbo pair wouldn't see the lead again, as firstly, the Lithgow boys with clever draw bowls and secondly the continued pressure mounting as the match went in Lithgow's favour.
Jeff and Ian closed out an intriguing match, finally winning 20-12. A great start for the Lithgow pair.
Lithgow were next drawn against the Mudgee pair of Jai Marshell and Steve Shannon, a very accomplished duo.
This match was played on Sunday morning and with greens running at a speedy 18 seconds promised to be a great battle. Madden-Townsend were, unlike Saturday, very quickly out of the blocks and raced to a lead of 9-1.
Things looked good for the older Lithgow pairing but the "young guns" from Mudgee were there to upset the apple cart.
Great skip bowling from Jai resulted in the pair, firstly, drawing level, then edging a shot in front by the halfway mark. Then the match became a real dog fight, when with three ends to go and the score 19-18 to Lithgow, the Mudgee boys managed to square the scores at 20-all after 21 ends.
In squaring the score sheet some great individual bowls were played by both pairings and spectators were appreciating the wonderful contest.
An extra end was required to find a winner and even this end provided a climax with Jai Marskell converting an 'on shot' to gain one shot, with the final bowl of the game.
Hard lines for the Lithgow boys, good luck to the Mudgee lads and here's hoping they can win the event at State to be played at Grenfell.
It was pleasing to see another Lithgow pairing contesting the pairs, with Col McDonell and Klaus Fegebank from Workies winning their Saturday game but unfortunate going down on Sunday. Good on you, guys, well done.
This weekend City were represented at Zone 4 Champion of Champions Singles by Ian Townsend who travelled to Forbes to contest Section 2 of the event.
Saturday morning Ian played Lee Stinson from Orange Country Club. Winning 18 of 33 ends was instrumental in gaining Stinson a 31-22 shot victory. Ian was pleased with his bowls on the day but Stinson was just too good, and continually converted last bowl draw shots to go on and win.
Stinson won through his next match as well, and played Gerard Beath from Cowra in the final, going down in a pretty tight game. Section 1 was won by Jono Davis and he will go forward to play Beath at Grenfell in the coming weeks. This match will determine who represents Zone 4 at the State Carnival.
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