WWC - Singles

Kirsten and I bowled at 18:00 yesterday in the first event, the singles. The rest of the girls had already bowled in earlier squads and had commented on how different to practise the lanes had played.

We started off at the higher end of the centre which in practise was hooking more. Kirsten and I were both fishing round trying to get to the pocket with the correct angles before the games started. The lanes were hooking a lot more than the day before but the reaction seemed inconsistent. The moves we made seemed to have the opposite effect on the ball to what we were expecting. Then the game started and about 2 frames in everything started backing off and not hooking! It was all very strange. Neither of us had any consistent reaction, so we continued moving around and changed balls. Jazreel Tan from Singapore was on the pair next to us and she looked like she had a good shot playing in at about board 12. Very strange on a short pattern but we both moved in to where she was playing trying to find something. We could get anything to look good playing there so after a quick word with some of the supporters who were able to go up and down the centre and see who was playing where and who was scoring we both moved back to the right. Unfortunately by this time we had wasted 2 games and both had two 160 games, not the start we were looking for! We went back to the right and tried to get the ball rolling earlier using balls with more surface, and started to strike! We both finished off the squad strongly and found a good look, I got back to just over 1200 and Kirsten a little bit under. We both bowled well the whole block, its just a shame we didn't get lined up sooner.

The cut for the top 4 final was about +140 I believe. The top 4 contained 2 Europeans, Krista Pollanen from Finland and Mai Ginge Jensen from Denmark. They will me joined by USA's Stefanie Nation and Mexico's Sandra Gonzalez. The finals are tonight after the doubles.

Our doubles pairings are Hayley White & Jo Cundy, Lisa John & Fiona Banks and Kirsten Penny & I the doubles will all be on the medium pattern.
Zara

www.zaraglover.com

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Women's World Championships - Las Vegas

I have been in Vegas nearly a week now, I arrived last Thursday evening and the rest of the girls joined me on Friday. It has been great to have a few days to rest and get used to the time difference!
The first day we were here Darren and I went to explore the area around our hotel, we found a big shopping mall across the road so did some shopping. As I didn't have my clothes yet, Matt was bringing them on Monday, I had a good excuse to buy some stuff, not too sure if the excuse extended to 2 pairs of shoes but hey ho, they were very nice lol.

The girls all arrived safely after 2 hours sat on the runway at Gatwick due to a plane having to do an emergency landing in front of them. We went for some dinner then all got an early night. Saturday was a day off so we headed to the outlet mall close to the strip to pick up some bargains. Kirsten and I have been to Vegas a few times before to play the Mega Buck events but for the other 4 girls it is their first visit so we have lots of things to show them! Saturday night we went to the Blues Brothers restaurant in Mandalay Bay. We had a live blues show while we ate :) then wandered around the luxor before heading back.

Sunday we went down to the Cashman Centre for unofficial practise. The set up there is very impressive, I will take some pictures and load them up. It is great to be able to compete in this kind of arena, let's hope this raises the bar for the standard of centres we will compete in for championships going forward! Practise wasn't on the tournament oiling patterns so just a way of us getting used to the environment and loosening up. We bowled for a couple of hours then headed back to the hotel to change and go out for dinner. We went to Samba a brazilian steak house in the Mirage for dinner. This is one of my favourite restaurants in Vegas, they serve all the meat from swords. We then wandered along the strip outside taking in all the lights. Although it was very hot (its 100 at night and up to 120 during the day here) it got the girls some great pictures!!! We stopped to watch the Bellagio fountain display and then headed back.

Monday was official practise and we were in the first squad at midday. Practise went well for the whole team. We all matched our equipment up and selected the 6 balls to keep in and excluded the other equipment we had brought.

In the evening was the opening ceremony which proved to be very amusing!!! We all had to emerge in teams from the walkway in the middle of the centre and walk out with our flag. Once all the teams had taken their places on the approaches we were invited to take a seat in the settee area. There were a few short speeches then the entertainment started. In true Las Vegas style Elvis emerged down the walk way strutting and grinding in a white sparkly suit. We all took much amusement as he ran through a number of classic songs. He was making his way up the approaches serenading a few bowlers on the way. As there weren't enough seats the French coach had gone and brought some more seats and I had sat on the end closest to the approach(much to Jo's relief!). Elvis starts heading our way and all of a sudden he's sitting on my knee!!! Much to the amusement of all on lookers! I'm sure some people got some funny pictures. Next was the turn of Cher, she want through a few songs and danced up and down the approaches. It was a very amusing and cheesy performance perfect for Vegas!

After the opening ceremony we headed back to the hotel for a team meeting and were told our squad times and pairings for the singles. First up would be Fiona and Hayley at 9am, the Lisa and Jo at 13:30 then Kirsten and I at 18:00.
Zara

www.zaraglover.com

Sent using BlackBerry from Orange

World Games

Sorry for the delay with keeping you up dated on the blog. I am having technical problems!!! My laptop has picked up a nasty virus. The scanner has been running for 5 days straight but I think I'm sorted now!

As you have probably seen online I bowled really well in the singles event in Taipei and led the field. I started off playing further in than in the doubles, playing about 10 at the arrows to 5 at the break point. I had to make sure my Siege had enough surface on to even out the reaction off the back of the pattern. The WTBA have brought a new ruling in that you can adjust the surface of the ball in-between games now so I was able to keep scuffing the ball every couple of games.

I led the singles pretty much from start to finish only having a few problems with certain pairs in the house. It seemed a few pairs of lanes had a lot of hang off the gutter and it was tough not to leave 2-8-10 combinations. But the slightest move to the right saw the ball jumping off the back of the pattern and it was very easy to go through the face.

Unfortunately for me the final pair for the step ladder developed that hang and I had a lot of trouble. The first game the lanes behaved themselves but as the oil pushed down a little I got into that 2-8-10 territory again! In hindsight a bit more surface or a move to the right with more ball speed would have been the answer but its all too quick at the time. I came away with a silver medal and I am very pleased with my overall performance in Taipei. The pattern was very tough and a great practise for Las Vegas and the World Championships. That's 2 World Games in a row I have come 2nd!! One day maybe I will break the pattern and go one better!

Myself, Darren Cundy and Chris Buck made the 36 hour trip from Taipei straight to Las Vegas. We got bumped to a later flight from Kaohsiung to Hong Kong so had access to the Dragon Air executive lounge for 5 hours and upgraded to business class which helped make the trip a bit more comfortable (shame they couldn't extend the upgrade to the Hong Kong to San Francisco flight!!!)

At Hong Kong we had a quick change over and boarded the long haul flight to the USA, we took off at 14:30 and landed at 12:30 the same day due to the 15 hour time difference. Very strange, none of us had any idea what day it was!
Unfortunately on arriving in San Fran we had a long layover waiting about 6 hours for the short flight to Las Vegas. This was the tough one as we were so tired it was difficult to keep our eyes open! We eventually boarded and once I was in my seat I didn't even stay awake for take off!!! I literally fell asleep instantly and opened my eyes and we were landing in Vegas!!!

We got a taxi to the hotel where we will be for the week and I went straight to sleep and didn't even move I don't think for 13 hours! The rest of the girls were to arrive the day after on a direct flight from Gatwick.
Zara

www.zaraglover.com

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World Games - Mixed Doubles

Well this morning was an early start, we bowled at 9am and the bus takes approximately an hour to the bowling centre. We were starting on lane 6 and moving 4 lanes right after each game. This draw couldn't have been any better as we didn't have to change ends of the centre and the cross during practise was quite different. The low end of the centre is hooking a lot less than the high end.

I spent the whole of practise fishing around playing up 3-4-5 with my Siege but had trouble getting comfortable. Darren was playing around 10-11-12 straight up the lane with very little rotation also with his Siege. The fresh is vicious on this pattern and the slightest mistake is magnified at the break point. Darren being Darren and getting out of the ball so clean made them look pretty easy and shot 230+ I stayed clean and made a double for 198. A solid start considering quite a number of strong pairings were just scraping 300 between the two of them. We moved to the next pair and they appeared to be hooking a bit more. We were following Korea and El Salvador. The guy from El Salvador had a pretty high rev rate and was playing outside of 10 so we were expecting the difference. Half way through the game I looked lined up and doubled 6th and 7th frames. Darren was in and around the pocket and then the transition came. After a double my ball decided not to hook so I washed out 8th and 9th and Darren's jumped and went through the face for a big split. We closed the game out with 9 spares for a 325 game :(

We both made the move in and the lanes continued to open up and give us a bit more margin for error. Both Darren and I used our Brunswick Siege's the entire block and finished in 8th place 130 off the medal pace.

The three finalists were Columbia, Korea and Malaysia.



Darren and I decided we needed to get out of the bowl for the afternoon so we visited the local shopping centre. You would not believe how enormous it was, 9 stories high!!! We went for some lunch and they were showing the bowling final in the restaurant. The players were solid during the matches, as a tv final on that pattern fresh would be far from easy. Korea showed the benefits of their strict training regime and emerged in gold medal position, with Columbia taking silver and Malaysia bronze.

Tomorrow we will play the singles event and have to make the top 10 to go through to the round robin where all scores go back to scratch.

World Games - Official Practise

Our trip to Chinese Taipei started at Heathrow on Friday morning. There were 3 nervous faces checking in as we only had 23kgs each in weight allowance for balls and were carrying all our clothes as hand luggage. Luckily we got a very nice man behind check-in who didn't charge us any excess baggage for our 4 balls each. To be honest the whole journey went without a hiccup. We flew for 11 hours to Hong Kong then only 90 mins to Kaohsiung the city hosting the games.

VIEW MY PHOTO ALBULM - CLICK HERE

We were greeted in arrivals by a group of volunteers allocated to different sports and ushered to the relevant coaches to be taken to the accreditation centre. Once we had filled in all the appropriate forms and received our accreditation cards and welcome packs we were taken to or hotel. The Kindness hotel will be our home for the next 4 nights and is very nice and newly renovated. As the World Games is a multi sport event there are many athletes from around the World competing in different sports, such as Sumo wrestling and Tug of War.



Today was official practise and we were expecting the conditions to be tough at Happy bowling centre. We saw the pattern before leaving the UK and the 38 foot 2:1 ratio was definitely going to be a challenge! Darren and I played all over the lane with the equipment we brought and changed surfaces on every ball. Both of us found good ball reaction as the lanes burned up and we were both using the New Brunswick Siege. It is going to depend greatly on which bowlers we are following to how the conditions develop as the fresh is extremely tough. We found the pattern changed very quickly so we are going to have to have our wits about us and make the moves quickly to keep up with the developing pattern.



We play mixed doubles tomorrow morning at 9am, so keep your fingers crossed :)



Zara



www.zaraglover.com



Sent using BlackBerry from Orange