Edgecumbe indoor bowling club member Paul Guest has recently won his 30th Bay of Plenty title in 25 years, the most Bay of Plenty titles to be held by one player.

Guest has been a bowler for more than 50 years, taking up the sport in Auckland at age 12. He was introduced to indoor bowls by his parents and played alongside them in his early years.

After a break, and then a move to the Bay of Plenty, Guest picked bowls up again in the 1990s, and never looked back.

Guest said his initial goal was to reach 25 BOP titles after a fellow player retired with the record of 24 titles.

“I wanted to get above that. But once I had, two other players achieved 24 titles,” he said.

He had to act fast to keep ahead and in August he joined forces with Luke Goodall to win champion of champion pairs at the Whakatāne Indoor Bowls stadium – his last opportunity in 2024 to claim a BOP title.  

Guest is still the first and only player to achieve 25 titles, but he said some younger players such as Dylan Greyvenstein – who recently scored his 14th title in four years – were quickly catching up.

Guest won the champion pairs with Greyvenstein earlier this year.

He has won three champion fours, four mixed fours, four champion triples, five championship pairs, one mixed pairs, one Henselite singles and two men’s singles, two champion of champion singles, five champion of champion pairs and one champion of champion triples.

“I’ve been lucky, most of these titles are in team sports, and I’ve been lucky enough to have great players on my team.”

His goal is to play the sport as long as he can and help promote it among the next generation.

“The beauty of indoor bowls is you can be as social or as competitive as you like.

“In the 60s and 70s, while in its heyday, bowls had very few junior players, but as numbers dropped NZ Indoor Bowls adopted the concept of ‘it’s a game for all’, which indeed it is,” he said.

Guest has spent the past two years coaching Whakatāne Intermediate students at lunchtimes, and this year he started the Junior Bowling Club.  

The club meets at the indoor bowls facility on the corner of Bridge and Kirk streets every Wednesday afternoon through school terms.

“We have our own stadium. It’s a purpose-built facility, also used for judo and karate,” he said.

He is also treasurer of the Whakatāne Indoor Bowls Association, which owns the stadium and has donated bowling mats to Tāneatua School, and loaned mats to Nukuhou North and Ōhope schools. “I’m absolutely enjoying it. We’d love to see these students carry it into their secondary schools.”