Local favourite crowned world champion

7th May, Lake Wales: WBW World Bowler of the Year and local favourite, Diandra Asbaty was crowned World Raking Masters 2007 champion with a convincing victory over Zara Glover of England while Englishmen, Stuart Williams took the Men's title.
Diandra, who opted to start the finals against challenger, Zara Glover of England on short oil, crusied to an easy 233-148 victory in the first match. Glover, who ran into tons of problems with splits in the first, fourth and ninth frames, was compounded with a miss in the sixth and 10th frames too.

In the second match, Diandra brought home a yet another clean game with a double in the third and fourth frames and four-in-a-row from frames sixth onwards for another impressive 235. The Englishwomen started off well with a double but another split in the third proved costly despite coming back strongly with four-in-a-row thereafter.

Needing to strike home at the 10th frame, Glover left a stubborn 10-pin to go down to the American with 220 and a 0-2 lost. The runner-up had reached the finals after outclassing Aumi Guerro of Dominican Republic, 226,233 to 183,201 for a 2-0 win while the champion had to work hard stretching to 3 matches to earn her final spot after knocking out Alicia Marcano of Venezuela, 2-1.

 
The women's quarterfinals started off with a surprise victory from Marcano when she edged top-seed, Caroline Lagrange of Canada, 2-1. Diandra was equally impressive taking out Patricia Schwarz of Germany, 2-0 in the second semi.

Two Malaysians, Wendy Chai and Zandra Aziela failed to progress when Chai lost to Aumi Geurro, 1-2 despite narrowly loosing to Guerro, 221-226 in the third deciding game while Zandra lost to Glover, 0-2 in the fourth quarterfinal match.

Diandra won US$10,00 as the newly-crowned champion with Glover settling for US$5,000. The loosing semifinalists took home US$3,000 each while positions fifth to ninth won US$1,000 each and the 10th-placed, Putty Armein won US$500.

 
The finals between Stuart Williams of England and Peter Ljung of Sweden was the closest-ever match on TV and certainly a match of the century. A costly single-pin miss by the Englishmen in the fifth frame of the first match allowed the Swede to take the match, 236-233 for a 1-0 lead to Ljung.

Williams came back with a vengence in the second to draw level at 1-1 edging his opponent, 235-224 this time it was the Swede that had an open frame in the fourth. And when Ljung had a split in the second frame of the deciding match, Williams knocked down five strikes-in-a-row and another five-in-a-row from frame eighth to cruise to an easy victory.

Despite a turkey after the second-frame split, another split in the sixth frame proved disasterous but the Swede still gave his best by bringing in six strikes-in-a-row to go down 240-269.

Stuart had to work harder to reach the finals earlier after being stretched to 3 games by Austria's Thomas Gross in the first semifinal match. Stuart's 186, 197 and 206 was enough to win 2-1 to the Austrian's 234, 151 and 204. Stuart also knocked out Davis O'Sullivan of USA 2-0 in the quarterfinals.

Peter Ljung cruised to a 2-0 victory over two-handed Jason Belmonte of Australia in the quarterfinals before taking eliminating England's Paul Moor, 2-0 in the semifinals to set up the showdown with Stuart.

Stuart bagged US$10,00 as the newly-crowned champion with Peter settling for US$5,000. The loosing semifinalists took home US$3,000 each while positions fifth to ninth won US$1,000 each and the 10th-placed, Mark Buffa of Canada won US$500.

Detailed scores: Women's Finals | Men's Finals | Final Results Photo Album.

Photos courtesy of Bowlers Journal International.