Lucky De Faria keeps hopes of three-peat alive
West End’s Craig De Faria kept his hopes of a third-straight Taranaki men’s open singles title alive – but only just.
The highly decorated De Faria, with 25 Taranaki titles to his credit, was in all sorts of bother in his second post section match in the Janko Computerssponsored event on Sunday evening at West End.
He trailed Jayden Ravji (Victoria, Wellington) 12-0, 16-2 and 19-8 at various stages.
But the tenacious De Faria fought back. He took the next five ends to lead 20-19. Ravji grabbed one shot back on the following head and then called the tune on the last end.
However, an excellent third bowl from De Faria, when he sat on the shot, gave him the point and the match 21-20.
The victory put De Faria into the quarterfinals, which will be played this Saturday at Paritutu. There De Faria will meet Okato’s Hamish Kape.
Kape recently gave a good account of himself at the Dominion tournament in Auckland, which included making the last eight in the pairs with Takapuna’s Jerry Belcher.
In the Taranaki singles on Sunday, Kape navigated past West End’s Wayne Hawkes 21-16 in the opening sudden-death encounter, before trouncing Paritutu’s Bruce Mummery 21-1.
There were 33 qualifiers in the men’s singles, which necessitated an extra round.
West End’s Dean Elgar was the unlucky player through the draw that was required to play the extra game.
After edging past New Plymouth’s Bill Foley 21-15, he knocked out Paritutu’s Don Christensen 21-7.
This Saturday, Elgar will play West End’s Joe Rona in a last 16 match, while at the same time, a likely encounter looms between Tower’s Scott Roberts and Inglewood’s Gerry O’Sullivan.
The winners of those two games will then advance to the mid-morning quarterfinals. The remaining quarterfinals will see John Garrud (West End) play Ron Gadsby (Fitzroy) and Evan Jones (Fitzroy) square off with Iain Parker (Stratford-Avon).
There was plenty of merit in the performances of both Jones and Parker on Sunday when they posted double victories in tight matches against more experienced and illustrious opponents.
Meanwhile, in the Jean Sandel-sponsored Taranaki women’s open singles, the field has been reduced to the semifinals stage after nine players qualified.
The surviving players are Marlene Barrowman (Paritutu), Rhonda Adams (Fitzroy), Chris Commane (Opunake) and Anne Brophy (New Plymouth).
Barrowman defeated her regular fours skip, Cathy Andrews, 21-13, while the other three quarterfinals were one-sided affairs and ended with scorelines of 21-5.
Adams beat Val McEldowney (New Plymouth), Commane defeated Gale Fache (Vogeltown) and Brophy ousted Briar Atkinson (Lepperton).
The women’s semifinals start at Paritutu at 9am on Saturday.