games of 237 - 210 - 208 -203
I used my Smash Zone again in the same part of the lane as the first squad on Friday, about 13 at the arrows to a breakpoint of 8/9. I have the Smash Zone laid out with the pin below my fingers and on the centre line of my grip, so when the lanes burned up and I had to move a lot deeper in the fifth game it didn't look as good. My plan was to change to the Twisted Fury Solid which I have polished up and drilled pin above my ring finger. This didn't match up that well as the lanes were just too burned up, even with the polished surface the ball was too strong, so I changed to my Twisted Fury in the 9th frame of the 5th game and struck out for a horrible
156 game. Which meant I needed a high score in the last game to have a chance of making the cut. I started off spare, open, and then strung some strikes together to the 9th frame I needed the first one in the 10th to be guaranteed a safe spot on finals day but left a 4 pin. This gave me a game of 234 and a total of 1296 with bonus and meant I was boarder line so had to bowl the second squad I had booked at 21:00.
I was a lot more consistent this block as I knew which balls to change to when so started up with the Smash Zone again and yet again it looked great on the fresh oil. When the lane burned up again I switched straight to the Twisted Fury so avoided the low game in the transition. I shot my first good 5th game of a block during the tournament and went onto the final pair confident I would beat my score. The final pair however gave me a few problems! I struck every shot on the left lane but couldn't get the right reaction on the right, I was going ok though as I only needed a par game. Then a split out of nowhere in the 8th frame made life a little more difficult! I struck again in the 9th on the left lane and needed to make the first one in the 10th frame my first strike on the right lane to beat my 96 over. I threw it good but left a 4 pin, meaning I couldn't beat the score. A mad 5 minutes of working out the final scores ensued but luckily for me there were only 2 high scores in that last squad bowled by the recently married Pat Luoto (previously Patricia Schwartz) from Germany and Jouni Helminen of Finland. I still wasn't 100% sure until they actually announced it but I was indeed the lucky one who fell as the cut to the finals! The tournament had run late and we had only finished the squad at 2am! The finals were scheduled to start at 8am the following morning so I made my way back to the hotel to try and sleep for a few hours after all the excitement!
The finals were a 4 game block with a cut of 50% each round. I started off well and made the second round without much trouble, in the next round I couldn't really find a great ball reaction. I kept fishing around but never found anything consistent from pair to pair and missed the next round.
I am very pleased with my performance on the whole as I was in Ankara to play the Open and the European Ranking Masters. The Masters starts tomorrow and will be a dual pattern format where we play on short and long patterns. To succeed on these specific lengths of patterns you need specifically laid out balls which on the whole don't give the best reaction on medium length
patterns like the Ankara Open pattern. Excess baggage problems limit bowlers to a maximum of 6 balls so I had 2 balls set up for the short and one for the long then two for the Ankara Open and a polyester ball for sparing. In actual fact the Twisted Fury I used during the Open was one of the balls set up for the short, but it may be going to more tournaments with me from now
on as it looked great on burned up lanes.
This was the first time I have played in Ankara and will definitely try and play again next year, I cannot fault the organisation of the tournament. Even though I arrived in the middle of the night I was greeted at the airport and taken to the hotel and everyone of the tournament crew were
always friendly and helpful! I would most definitely recommend the trip to more bowlers and tournament organisers out there looking for tips, these people are definitely a group to try to emulate at any tournament if you want it to be a success!
For full results please visit:
Zara
