Martin Larsen, Sweden, had games of 279, 248, 267, 248, 213 and 257 to shoot into the lead in the qualifying of the 1st Maribor Open Strike Tournament at Strike Bowling Center in Maribor, Slovenia.

The World Champion in Team (2003) and Doubles (2006) chalked up a 1512 six-game total, an average of 252.00, to become the first player who cracked the 1500-bar in the tournament.

Pictured left: Larsen "killed" previous leader "Dynamite Harry" Thomas Tybl from Austria, who fell to fourth with 1431. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Larsen missed his personal best, 1541, by mere 29 pins. The 28-year-old righthander had 56 strikes, 11 spares and three open frames (two splits and a single-pin miss).

His 279 game, one of five 279s in this squad, is the highest game in the tournament thus far.

The picture shows Larsen's final shot of his 1512 series that resulted in a strike. Click on the image to enlarge it.

According to Dina Košir (pictured left), marketing manager of Strike Bowling, the state-of-the-art 16-lane center has seen two perfect games since it opened its doors in April 2006. You don't need to be a prophet to predict that No. 3 will be coming soon.

Larsen's compatriot Tony Fransson, who was on the same lane as Tybl in Squad 17, finished mere 40 pins behind in second place with 1472. Fransson, who had two 279s in games three and five and a 257, averaged 245.33 for the round.

Besides Larsen and Fransson, there were four more players from Team Pergamon in this squad, three Swedes, Mathias Årup (12th, 1313), Pär Svensson (14th, 1293) and Robert Andersson (29th, 1193), and Hafthor Hardarson (27th, 1210) from Iceland.

Back row from left: Hardarson, Andersson, Årup, Svensson. Front row from left: Larsen and Fransson. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Tybl is sandwiched between two of Europe's best bowlers, Stuart Williams and Paul Moor, both from England.

Williams, who won the World Ranking Masters at the Kegel Training and Tournament Center in Lake Wales in May, had a high game of 263 and a low game of 216 to overtake the third position with 1448 pinfall total and an average of 241.33.

Moor, the 3-time defending European ranking champion, had a high game of 257 and a low game of 202 to finish in fifth with 1352 (225.33). Their compatriots Nick Froggatt and Robert Kendall landed in 10th and 33rd place with 1314 and 1146, respectively.

L-R Froggatt, Williams, Moor, Kendall. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Dutch bowling center proprietor Ronald Dol moved into sixth place with 1342 including a 279 in the sixth game. Thomas and Ivonne Gross, who led after day one qualifying slipped to 7th and 8th place with 1330 and 1277, respectively. Tomaz Krizaj is the top-ranked Slovenian player in 9th place with 1317.

Rounding out the top 14, who will earn two byes for he finals on Sunday are Helmut Peinelt and Dirk Völkel, both Germany, in 11th ands 13th place with 1313 and 1312.

Qualifying continues on until Saturday evening and concludes with the one-game Desperado Squad around Midnight. A total of 56 players will qualify for the finals on Sunday, Sep. 16: The top 52 in the overall qualifying standings and the top 4 Desperados.

Pictured here is Squad 17 during practice. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Qualifiers 1-14 will earn two byes, while qualifiers 15-28 will bypass the first round only. The remaining 28 finalists will bowl 3 games starting from scratch The top 14 will qualify for the second round and meet qualifiers 15-28. The top 14 after another 3-game set from scratch meet the top 14 qualifiers in Round #3.

The field will be trimmed to 16, 8 and then 4 in Rounds 3 to 5 (same format as before). The four remaining players will bowl for the title and the 8.000 Euro top prize in a traditional stepladder format based on the standings after Round #5: No. 4 bowls No. 3, the winner meets No. 2 and the winner bowls No. 1 for the title.


Bowlingdigital will cover the event live from Maribor all the way through to the finals on Sunday, September 16. The four-player stepladder finals will be broadcasted live on Slovenian television in a two-hour show from Strike Bowling Center.

The qualifying of the Maribor Open Strike Tournament continues on Thursday with Squads 17 and 18 at 4 and 8 p.m. local time (GMT +1). Qualifying leader Thomas Tybl, a.k.a. as "Dynamite Harry" from Austria, is trying to improve his six-game total of 1431, a 238.50 average.

The picture show Tybl, left, with Team Austria head coach and tournament purser Helmut Amstätter.

Among those challenging Tybl's score today are three players from England, World Ranking Masters champion Stuart Williams, 3-time defending European Ranking champion Paul Moor and Nick Froggatt; four players from Finland led by European champion Jari Ratia and Pasi Uotila and six from Sweden spearheaded by World Doubles champions Martin Larsen and Robert Andersson.

Moor (2), Andersson (2, pictured), Williams, Larsen and Uotila have won seven of the 13 stops of the 2007 European Bowling Tour.

The Maribor Open is on the schedule for the 2008 European Bowling Tour (Sep. 6-14, 2008). The 2007 Maribor Open offers total prize money of 73.600 Euro or approximately 102,000 U.S. Dollar. Men and women bowl in the same division with women receiving 8 pins handicap, the standard on the European Bowling Tour.

The winner will receive the 8.000 Euro top prize (approx. $11,000). Though the general tax on all prizes in Slovenia is 25 per cent, players do not have to pay the tax from their prize money. Tournament director Wolfgang Lohschmid stated that "each player who cashes has to sign a copy of his passport and give a receipt for the amount of money he has won and then he can walk away with the whole prize money."

Qualifying continues on until Saturday evening and concludes with the one-game Desperado Squad around Midnight. A total of 56 players will qualify for the finals on Sunday, Sep. 16: The top 52 in the overall qualifying standings and the top 4 Desperados.

Pictured here is Squad 17 during practice. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Qualifiers 1-14 will earn two byes, while qualifiers 15-28 will bypass the first round only. The remaining 28 finalists will bowl 3 games starting from scratch The top 14 will qualify for the second round and meet qualifiers 15-28. The top 14 after another 3-game set from scratch meet the top 14 qualifiers in Round #3.

The field will be trimmed to 16, 8 and then 4 in Rounds 3 to 5 (same format as before). The four remaining players will bowl for the title and the 8.000 Euro top prize in a traditional stepladder format based on the standings after Round #5: No. 4 bowls No. 3, the winner meets No. 2 and the winner bowls No. 1 for the title.

Bowlingdigital will cover the event live from Maribor all the way through to the finals on Sunday, September 16. The four-player stepladder finals will be broadcasted live on Slovenian television in a two-hour show from Strike Bowling Center.