Van Damme retains title

The 15th Malta Open came to a thrilling end last weekend at the Eden SuperBowl. Close to 200 bowlers from 21 different nations in Europe took part.

After five days of competition, the titles went to Germany's Tanya Petty and towering Belgian Chris van Damme, who clinched the men's honour for a second consecutive year.

Sue Abela was Malta's best bowler, finishing sixth among a very strong field of 50 players in the women's event. Kenneth Arpa placed 23rd in the men's division.

This year's Open saw a change in the format.

The initial round was modified to allow bowlers play multiple six-game entries, giving them better chances of qualifying and very much in line with the majority of European Bowling Tour events.

Abela led the field for much of the qualifying round and headed into the penultimate round robin stage second behind Zara Glover, of England. The others to make the cut were Kirsten Penny, Ivonne Gross, Petty, Martina Beckel, Helen Johnsson and Bigi Manico.

But, Abela suffered a dip in form when it mattered most. She rolled three sub-200 games in the seven-game session, only picking up two match victories and finished in sixth place.

Abela missed out on the stepladder finals by 128 pins. The finalists were Johnsson, Glover, Petty and Gross.

Petty beat Gross 216-212 and went on to face Glover in the semi-final. That also ended narrowly in underdog Petty's favour, 196-186.

The final, Petty vs Johnsson, was anything but close, as the German took the advantage in frame two, building on it to claim a runaway victory with a brilliant 276-181 score.

'Bowling giant'

'Bowling giant' Van Damme has been holidaying and bowling in Malta for around 20 years now. He has figured in no fewer than 13 Malta Open tournaments since 1992.

He qualified for round two (top 48 men) in eighth place as the formidable men's competition was led by Austrian newcomer Thomas Gross with a massive 1,489 tally, the second largest six-game set to be ever played in the Open (highest - Chris van Damme, 1,503 - Malta Open '05).

The men's qualifying round also featured two 'perfect' 300 games, the first coming from Miki Schroder (Austria) and the other by Tobias Karlsson (Sweden).

Van Damme improved to third place after a 971 in round two and advanced yet again to go second behind Gross. The other six qualifying spots for the round robin were filled by Karlsson, Nunzio Romano, Mikael Kanold, Mark de Jong, Serge Frouvelle and Geert-Jan van Baest.

Unbelievably, after some positional changes during the seven games, the top eight finished the round robin in exactly the same positions, meaning that the stepladder final would be contested between Gross, van Damme, Karlsson and Romano.

Game one between Karlsson and Romano was a thriller, with the Italian just clinching it in the final frame, 213-207. This meant that Romano would face van Damme in the penultimate match. The latter is a tough nut to crack in step ladder situations, and proved that by winning the match 226-202 to proceed to the final against Gross.

In the final, Van Damme put together three strikes in a row for a 218-186 victory.

"Met mijn hoofde in de wolken," said Van Damme when asked to comment about his victory in his favourite tournament of the year.

He then kindly gave the same comment in English, 'My head is in the clouds', complimented by a huge grin.