Youths dominate Graded B masters
4th June, Singapore: Singapore youths, Anthony Wee and Yeo Jing Yi dominated the Graded B Men's and Women's Masters finals of the 42nd Singapore International Open with easy victories on Thursday morning. Today's youths are simply too good for the seasoned men's graded B bowlers as demonstrated by 16-year-old Anthony Wee when he took over the running of the 8-game Men's Graded B Masters finals from the halfway mark.
Leonard Ng set a blistering pace with 232 in the opening game and despite a poor 167 in the second game, still held the lead after that. Tan Sze Han took over the lead after the third game but his lead was quickly taken over by Md Salleh Basar at the fourth game.
A sizzling 278 by Anthony Wee propelled the youngster to the front and he never looked back taking a comfortable victory at the end of the finals with a total of 1735. Wee finished 76 pins ahead of Md Salleh in second with 1659.
"This is my first major victory and I'll relish this for a long time," said the ACS Indpendent student, Anthony, whose first title was winning the National Age Group Championship Under-21 Masters.
"It is my ambition to make the national squad and I'll trained harder to achieve this goal. "It's very difficult to beat the youngsters these days especially when they have good basic training and good coaches in the schools to help them," expressed the runnerup, Md Salleh.
Tan Sze Hen settled for second with 1616 ahead of Desmond Chong and India's Pratik Vijan completing the top 5 with 1546 and 1539 respectively.
Meanwhile, Yeo Jing Yi of Singapore, claimed her first Singapore Open title when she triumphed in the Women's Graded B division with 1544. The 14-year-old literally led from start to finish after Michaela Oehler had led in the opening game.
Michelle Ng, who trailed the champion in the early stages stormed home with a superb 204 in her final game to clinch second spot with 1502 ahead of Stacy Lian in third with 1496. Lynette Ho and Gale Wong finished in the money in fourth and fifth positions.
"I had trained hard for this tournament and I'm glad I've come away with the win," said the Methodist Girl's School student, Yeo Jing Yi. Yeo's previous win came way back in 2007 when she bagged the National Age Group Championship Under-12 Masters crown when she was just 11.
Norapat S. of Thailand became the fifth bowler to shoot the perfect game during last night's 10.00pm qualifying squad. The Thai won the special prize of S$5,000 awarded to anyone who achieve the feat at designated perfect game squads.
His perfect effort gave him a total of 919 which allowed him to make the cut for the Men's Graded A Masters finals in fifth spot. The first four bowlers who shot perfect games but did not win any prize were Helmi Chew of Singapore, Adrian Ang of Malaysia, Sithipol Kunaksorn of Thailand and Hurul Ainul Abu Razak of Malaysia.
Photos by Terence Yaw for SBF.