BAHRAIN’S Abdulla Ali secured a place in the men’s open second round yesterday in the PBF Third Philippine International Open Bowling Championship in Manila.
Ali booked his berth after finishing in the top 12 among 36 bowlers in the first round which featured eight games.
Ali was ranked an impressive sixth overall with a 1,669 total and a 208.63 average. His best game was the sixth of his series with 235 pinfalls while his lowest was 147 in the third.
Defending champion Sam Cooley of Australia was ranked first with Basil Ng of Singapore second. They had identical figures of 1,843 and 230.
Billy Islam of Indonesia followed with 1,768 and 221.00 while Ernet Kwok (1,706 and 213.25) of Hong Kong was fourth and Marcus Lim of Singapore (1,684, 210.50) fifth, just ahead of Ali.
Ali
Other players to advance to the second round yesterday were Alex Yu and Ivan Tse of Hong Kong, Muhd Syazirol and Jonathan Chan of Malaysia, Dhruv Sarda of India and Ahmad Safwan of Singapore.
Final
Meanwhile, Bahrain’s Layla Janahi earned a spot in the final of the ladies’ graded masters category despite not making the cut during qualifying where she needed to finish in the top 10 but was classified 18th.
Layla
Layla was able to claim her place after taking one of two places in the Desperado Squad. The other spot was taken by Anukrit Bshnoi of India.
In the final, Layla made the most of the opportunity and narrowly missed out on a place in the title-deciding step-ladder phase. She finished fifth but needed to be in the top three for the step-ladder.
Layla had a 1,748 total in the 10-game series with a 174.80 average. Her best game was 209 in the third and lowest 127 in the fifth.
Layla was just 60 pins shy of matching third placer Liza Vicente, who was the last bowler to make it to the step-ladder.
Fellow Filipino Kaygien Itaralde (1,864, 186.40) and Linda Grzybowska of Malaysia (1,809, 180.90) were the others to advance.