Peter Wilson has found the magic formula and his bowls career has continued its rapid acceleration this year.
Wilson (39), a storeman for Fonterra, joined the Kaikorai Bowling Club in 1994 but initially made slow progress through the ranks.
He started to step on the success ladder when he joined the Professional Bowls Association six years ago.
Wilson, who has three Bowls Dunedin titles, has moved steadily up the New Zealand PBA ranking list and now sits in the top equal spot with the experienced Chris Lourie (Waikato) on 246 points.
Jamie Hill (Auckland) is third on 244, Ken Walker (Dunedin) has 240, Murray Glassey (Wellington) 211 and Mark Watt (Dunedin) 206.
Wilson, Lourie, Walker and Glassey were members of the New Zealand PBA team that beat Australia 2-1 to win the PBA International Challenge Singles Trophy late last month.
This was the second year of the transtasman international PBA bowls series held at Tweed Heads in Queensland.
The other member of the team was Raika Gregory (Waikato), who won the vital last singles game to win the trophy for New Zealand when he beat former world champion Steve Glasson (Australia) 9-5, 7-5 in the final game.
Each country has five team members who play a round-robin competition against the five members of the other team.
The top three players of each country then play off in the trophy round.
Gregory was the best-performed New Zealand player in the round robin and won three of his five games. Glassey and Lourie each won two games.
Walker's one win was against former Commonwealth Games and World Bowls women's champion Karen Murphy whom he beat 9-3, 4-11, 2-0. Wilson also beat Murphy 9-8, 9-10, 2-0.
In the trophy round, Lourie beat Brett Wilkie (Australia) 10-3, 7-10, 2-1 but Glassey lost to former world champion Kelvin Kerkow 7-10, 6-10.
The Tweed Heads Bowling Club has 4000 members, and is the largest bowling club in the world. It employs 170 either full or part-time staff and is reputed to have a turnover of about $A130 million ($NZ163.5 million) a year.
Dunedin's John Cross was the manager of the New Zealand team and raised $A450 for the Christchurch earthquake appeal with a raffle for a New Zealand team shirt.
