Congratulations to Kurt Bown
Queensland State Bowls Champion!
The men’s gold medal match between Kurt Brown and Brendan Wilson was as good as it gets in competitive bowls. With the goal of being first to 25 shots, it could’ve been anyone’s game. Kurt started off stronger and kept a consistent 2-shot lead, until Brendan matched him at 6-6 with some ricochet until both men were 8-8 on the leaderboard. Brendan pushed through with a 3-shot end giving him 11 shots, with Kurt remaining on 8. Kurt responded with 2 shots, edging closer to Brendan’s now 12 and keeping spectators unsure as to who was going to claim the gold.
Brendan consistently replied with some stellar shots pushing him to a 5-shot lead over Kurt 15-10. Brendan soon started maintaining a lead of 4 shots, making Kurt work hard while Brendan slowly edged up to keep the game was in his favour.
When Brendan had a substantial lead of 22-13, Kurt in his own words “dug deep” and came back to produce some winning shots, keeping his nerve and increasing his lead by 2 shots over each of the next three ends to 22-19.
Kurt said he was starting to get a bit worried 22 to 13 down but decided to soldier on. “The biggest problem I was having was that I just needed to wake up to myself,” he said.
Kurt’s “digging deep” worked as in the last end, Brendan was holding 3 when Kurt’s played the last bowl of the match spectacularly and got within millimetres of the jack, claiming the gold medal 25-24.