No. 1 seeded Zara Glover (left) from England, won the women's title in 31st European Champions Cup at Treff Bowling in Duisburg, Germany, in two straight games against Krista Pöllänen (right), Finland, two-games-to-none.

All pictures Beat Grauwiler.

Glover has chosen the long pattern for the opening games and escaped with a 206-203 win. The game #2 on the short pattern was close until Glover reeled off four consecutive strikes to win the game and the match, 233-186.

In the semis, Glover went the distance to win against Germany's Patricia Luoto, 2-1, while Pöllänen came back from an opening game loss to beat Ivonne Gross, Austria, 2-0.

Gross, the No. 6 seed, was ranked third and 7th seeded Luoto was ranked fourth, but both players shared the bronze medal.



The ECC features the national champions or ranking leaders - one man and one woman per country - of the European Tenpin Bowling Federation member federations plus the defending champions.

All players bowled three 8-game blocks (a total of 24 games) preliminaries over three days: Block 1 on short oil, Block 2 on long oil and Block 3 on short/long oil (left lane short, right lane long).

The top 8 players after the preliminaries qualified for the single-elimination final in best-of-three games format. In each round the highest seeded player bowled the lowest seeded player 2nd highest vs. the 2nd lowest, etc.) based on the preliminaries.