England's Dominic Barrett produced a stunning comeback to book his place in the quarter-final of the 2008 PartyCasino.com World Tenpin Masters at the Barnsley Metrodome on Saturday afternoon.

Barrett trailed by 254-216 after the first game against reigning World Championships Masters champion Biboy Rivera, Philippines, and looked to be heading out of the tournament. However, a fantastic second game (276), which included eight consecutive strikes, saw him keep his hopes alive to set up an all-English quarterfinal against Paul Moor.

"I think it will be a good match and he played well in his first one," said Barrett. "But I feel pretty confident and if we both get settled in then it will be a high-scoring match.
"I've played him a couple of times before but nothing as big as this. I definitely beat him once and I think he won the other one."

Despite trailing badly in the first game, Barrett insisted he was confident he could recover. He added: "I made a bad decision to start off trying to stay in the middle of the lane, but I corrected that in the second and that's what cost Biboy the match. A 38-pin deficit in this sort of format is not too much."

"The scores are always big in arenas like this and it only took a couple of mistakes from my opponent. It wasn't easy to get back into it but it was in reach."

Barrett's countryman Stuart Williams scraped into the last eight himself with a narrow win over top ranking American Diandra Asbaty. Williams won by only five pins in the tightest match of the tournament so far and his total of 398 would have not been good enough to prevail in four of the five previous matches.

Both players struggled to find their form in front of a capacity crowd of 500, but Asbaty's 393 was not enough and her involvement in the competition is now over. "It was all about survival," said Williams. "In the last game I was just counting the pins.

"She had an open one near the end and I thought that was my chance but then I followed it with a 7-10.
"After that it was difficult to know what was going to happen but the main thing is to get through to the next round."

An open frame in the eighth frame of the first game gave Williams the lead, although a foul in the tenth for overstepping kept the score close. Asbaty never had the lead but was never far behind and an open frame in the eighth of the second game from Williams looked like it could prove crucial.

But Asbaty could not take advantage as she then spared the next and Williams held on for a five-pin triumph.

He will now meet Osku Palermaa, who produced the best performance of the tournament so far in his opening round. In a match between two former World Cup champions, the Finn cruised to a 516-461 victory over Michael Schmidt, Canada. The two-hander's tally was the tenth highest total of World Tenpin Masters history.

The total of 977 pins was also the sixth best aggregate in this, the tenth staging of the tournament. "I'm happy and could even try something at the end and still won by quite a bit," said Palermaa.

"I felt quite relaxed all the way through and for 16 frames I did not have to move at all.
"The lane is a fair bit drier than last time. I thought Michael would be better but he shot 460 and you always have to aim for that score.
"I love it here. The bowling I had (in the match) was just phenomenal and I felt I couldn't miss."

Schmidt was behind from the start as the opening frame in the first game was an open one, while Palermaa produced seven strikes in a row to dominate proceedings. His only error in the first game saw him spare the eighth but ten strikes saw him end the first game 276-227 ahead. Both players scored in the 230s in the second game to give Palermaa 55-pin victory.