bowlingguide.nz is an independent guide to bowling in New Zealand. We cover two separate sports that happen to share a name: lawn bowls, played on greens at clubs around the country, and ten-pin bowling, played on lanes at commercial bowling centres. Our aim is to help you find somewhere to play, understand how each game works and know which organisation to turn to next.
The site is written for ordinary readers rather than insiders. You don’t need to know what a jack, a bias or a spare is before you start, because we explain each term the first time it appears.
What we do
We publish plain-language guides for people who want to try bowling, get better at it or simply find a good venue for an afternoon or a night out. Everything on the site falls into one of three groups.
Venue and club guides
Our city and regional guides list ten-pin bowling centres and lawn bowls clubs, and set out what each one offers. That includes the number of lanes or greens, coaching and leagues, food and drink, accessibility, and whether you need to book ahead.
Rules and how-to-play guides
We explain how each game works from the ground up. For lawn bowls, that means ends, shots, bias and delivery. For ten-pin bowling, it means frames, strikes, spares and how a score is added up.
Guides to the organisations behind the sport
Lawn bowls and ten-pin bowling are run by different bodies, and newcomers often don’t know they exist. We explain who does what, from Bowls New Zealand and its regional centres to Tenpin Bowling New Zealand and the leagues that run under it.
What we don’t do
- We are not a booking service. To reserve a lane or join a club, you deal with the venue or club directly.
- We are not an official body. Competition rules, selection and coaching pathways belong to the governing bodies of each sport.
- We don’t publish invented reviews, star ratings or rankings.
Our principles
A few simple principles guide every page we publish.
Accuracy first
Facts are checked against primary sources: a venue’s or club’s own website, Bowls New Zealand, Tenpin Bowling New Zealand, the regional centres and the published laws of each sport. If a detail can’t be confirmed, we leave it out or say clearly that it is unconfirmed.
Two codes, kept separate
Lawn bowls and ten-pin bowling have different equipment, venues, vocabulary and governing bodies. We keep them apart on the page, so a bowl is never called a ball and a green is never called a lane.
Independence and neutrality
We describe what a venue or club offers and leave the judgement to you. When we say a venue suits families, groups or competitive players, that reflects its facilities and programmes, not a score we made up.
Plain language
Short paragraphs, clear headings and explained terms come before clever writing. A first-time bowler should be able to follow every guide.
Kept up to date
Bowling centres change names and owners, and clubs merge or move. When we learn that a detail has changed, we correct the page.
The editorial team
Douglas Whitlow is the editor of bowlingguide.nz and the site’s responsible publisher and lead writer. He plans the topics we cover, writes and edits the guides, and checks each fact against its source before a page goes live.
Douglas writes about both codes, with a particular interest in explaining rules and scoring to people who are picking up a bowl or a ball for the first time. He is also the person who reviews reader corrections and decides when a page needs to be updated.
How we use AI
We use AI tools, including Claude, to help with research, structure and first drafts. AI never has the final say. Every page is read, fact-checked and edited by a person before it is published, and the editor is responsible for what appears on the site.
You can read exactly how this works in our AI policy.
Contact
We are glad to hear from readers, clubs and venues. Get in touch if you have:
- spotted an error or an out-of-date detail
- a club or venue whose listing needs updating
- a suggestion for a topic, town or region we should cover
- a question about our sources
You can reach the editorial team through our contact page. A link to the page in question helps us fix things faster.
For details on how we handle personal information and the conditions for using the site, see our privacy policy and terms of use.