Tali Bowling Centre – Helsinki Finland

This tournament is renowned for being the toughest tournament of the calendar, primarily due to the standard and quantity of Finish bowlers that take part each year. I didn’t have the pleasure of visiting the centre before they had a massive re-fit three years ago. This enormous centre used to have tiered seating all through the centre and the stories that I hear about atmosphere and excitement of finals held there make me wish I had had the opportunity to compete. Since the re-fit there is only a small amount of the tiered seating left in, but the atmosphere there is still something special all through the event. It is a real honour to compete in front of such a knowledgeable crowd.

I arrived in a not so cold Helsinki on Thursday afternoon and chose to observe the squad and get a game plan together ready for the squad I had on Friday. The lanes as usual looked tough but pretty fare. I watched the squad and then went back to the hotel with the English contingent taking part in the tournament to get some rest. Friday morning came and I felt pretty confident. I have made a lot of changes to my game during the period I took off tournament play at the end of the year, and although I don’t feel like I’m back at 100% yet, I am most certainly on the way.

After two games of the squad it was obvious I had the wrong surfaces on my equipment and really had no ball reaction, so I spent the rest of the squad trying different equipment in different parts of the lane. I was having a joke with one of the Finish guys bowling next to me as we were both not scoring so highly. We decided to make a bet for the last game for a drink, to make it more interesting and luckily for me I found a great reaction on the last pair of lanes shooting a 290 game out of no where… Very amusing and I most definitely won the bet!

In the break I took the surface off most of my equipment to try and find a better match up and re-entered in the next squad. I had a much better ball reaction, but physically didn’t feel right and made some bad decisions which cost me. I didn’t score enough to make the cut so went back to the hotel again to rest up and decide what to do the day after.

On the Saturday I had a pretty good reaction with the surfaces I had on Friday and bowled physically very well. Unfortunately I just couldn’t get to the score needed to make the cut. My highest finish was 1306 but the cut ended up being 1332.

For full results click HERE