National Champion of Champions ends with a Holt
Former English representative David Holt has become the first international to capture the National Champion of Champions after prevailing at Ascot Park, South Australia, this morning. Former English representative David Holt has become the first international to capture the National Champion of Champions after prevailing at Ascot Park, South Australia, this morning.
Holt will now look to extend his streak at the nation’s premier club-to-international-representative event at the 2014 World Champion of Champions in Christchurch, New Zealand, next year, but will debut in the the green and gold uniform instead of his traditionally coveted Three Lions uniform. The honour of representing Australia at the world event is bestowed upon both the men’s and women’s singles winners.
During an all-out slug fest, Holt, who is based at Cabramatta in NSW, was able to get the better of young Australian A squad member Daniel Patterson, from Bassendean in Western Australia, leading from go-to-woe to record a comfortable 21-8 shot victory.
“I’m over the moon at the moment, I’ve been here since 2002 and I lost a final shortly after I got here, in 2003 or 2004, and that was devastating because it’s so hard to make the final, so this morning when I woke up i thought ‘okay, this time we’re going to go the right way’,” Holt said after clinching victory.
“It’s a long slog to get to this point, I remember when it was first announced that it was going to be this format it was billed as ‘every bowler in Australia has the same chance; join a club, win the club, district, zone, state finals, which is obviously 16 exceptionally good bowlers from the state, go to the Australian event and in theory go to compete against the world. “It will be a really proud moment for me going to Worlds, even though people will still say ‘Pommy Dave’, I don’t play for England any more and I’ve been a citizen here for a number of years. “I try to be dinky-di, I mean I haven’t quite got the accent right yet, but I wished I’d come here 20 years ago because I love Australia.”
While the men’s event didn’t fall the way of Western Australia, it was a fairytale finish for experienced Sandgroper Noelene Abe in the blue-ribbon women’s gold medal final after stumbling at the finish line in previous years. Pitted against Queensland’ up-and-coming Kristy Thatcher, the match appeared somewhat log jammed until Abe piled on 10 shots over five consecutive ends before banking her first National Champion of Champions trophy 21-13 and booking her ticket to New Zealand.
In the men’s pairs, former National Coach Cameron Curtis, who orchestrated Australia’s greatest ever gold-medal haul at the Commonwealth Games in 2006, and 2010 NSW Open singles and triples champion Carl Healey started rather shakily, dropping 4 shots on the second end to Victoria’s Adrian Marchioli and Nick McIntyre, before steamrolling to a 11-8 win.
The fourth final of the National Champion of Champions will be staged tomorrow (13/10) when the women’s pairs take to the green at Ascot Park from 9.00am, with the qualifiers to be decided this afternoon.