Korean bowlers dominate international preliminaries on opening day at World Bowling Open

    07/09/15

    Japan

    Lee Youngjun leads men's division after 6/10 squads with 746; Lee Nahyun leads women's field with 760, including one of four 300 games by a woman

    2015BWOKoreanWomenNationalTeamBanner.jpg

     

    The Japanese and the international preliminaries of the inaugural World Bowling Open got underway on Thursday, July 9, with the first six out of 10 squads at Shinagawa Prince Hotel and Round1 Minamisuma bowling centers in Tokyo, Japan.

    2015BWOMikaKoivuniemi.jpgThe Korean bowlers (pictured above is the Korean women's national Team) dominated the opening day at Minamisuma bowling center with Lee Youngjun and Lee Nahyun leading the 62 men and 42 women in the international pool with 746 and 760 three-game totals, respectively. The top 19 international men and women and the top 20 Japanese men and women after Friday's Squad 10 will advance to the main event.

    Youngjun rolled games of 278, 245 and 223, an average of 248.67, to beat out Finland's Mika Koivuniemi (right, juggling with his bowling ball), a two-time PBA Player of Year, for the top spot in the men's division by just five pins. Koivuniemi toppled 741 pin one squad later.

    2015BWOBillONeill2.jpgThird place belonged to Park Sangpil, Korea, with 737. Bill O'Neill (left) was the best U.S. bowler and the second-best PBAer in fourth place on 733. Due to a cooperation between World Bowling and the PBA, the World Bowling Open will award a PBA title if won by a PBA member.

    Korean bowlers manned 11 of the top 19 spots with Oh Ju Hun on the bubble in 19th place with 689 or an average of 229.67.

    2015BWOSyaidatulAfifah.jpgThe Korean women, Lee Nahyun and Hwang Yeonju, blew away not just the ladies field but they also outscored the men. Nahyun and Hwang both bowled in Squad 3 both player achieved perfection to finish 1, 2 in the women's division.

    Nahyun posted games of 269, 191 and 300 to take the early lead with 760 total and an average of 253.33. Hwang sandwiched her perfecto between games of 198 and 251 to sit in second place with 749.

    2015BWOJennyWegner.jpgTheir fellow countrywomen Jung Dawun and Baek Seungja were in third and fourth place with 734 and 727, respectively. Syaidatul Afifah (right) of Malaysia was the best non-Korean woman in fifth place with 726.

    Jenny Wegner (left) of Sweden was the best European woman in seventh place on 713. Korea's Kim Jinsun rolled the first 300 game in the first game of Squad 2 and followed with 218 and 193 for 711, good for 9th place overall.

    2015BWODanielleMcEwan3.jpg13th place Danielle McEwan (right) is the best U.S. woman with 697. Like their male counterparts, the Korean women had 11 bowlers in the top 19. Kim Subin currently holds the 19th and last spot to advance with 679 and an average of 226.33.

    The 104 international bowlers and the 234 Japanese bowlers, 170 men (high score: 767) and 64 women (high score: 793, including the lone 300), will return on Friday for the final four squads before the cut to the top 19 international and the top 20 Japanese bowlers in each division.

    Photos courtesy of Hero Noda.

    2015WBOPoster.jpg
    2015JBCLogo.jpg The inaugural Bowling World Open, the 13th event on the 2015 World Bowling Tour and one of the Tour's "major" tournaments, will be held from July 9-12 in Tokyo, Japan. The richest event on the 2015 WBT schedule offers total prize fund of 48 million Japanese Yen, currently 394,750 U.S. Dollar as of today.

    Men and women will compete in separate divisions for the same amount of prize money (24 million Yen each) using the same format. The men's and women's champion will walk away with the 10 million Yen top prize (approx. $82,240).

    The Japanese and the international preliminaries got underway on Thursday, July 9, at Round1 Minamisuma and Shinagawa Prince Hotel bowling centers in Tokyo, Japan.

    There are 110 spots in each division available for the qualifying of the main event which will be filled with players from the Japanese and international preliminaries and maximum 78 invited players.

    All players, who were invited by the organizers, will skip the preliminaries and will be automatically seeded into the main tournament. Note: Depending on the total number of seeded players who will finally register for the event, the number of players who will advance from the preliminaries might change.

    The World Bowling Open main event features five games of qualifying with the top 33 advancing to the semifinals. All pinfall carries over into the three-game round after which the field will be trimmed to the top 4 men and the top 4 women who will proceed to the TV Finals in single-elimination match play format.

    The top seeded player after eight games will bowl the No. 4 seed and the second-seeded player takes on the No. 3 seed. The winners will bowl for the title.

    The Bowling World Open treats men and women equally with 10 million Yen top prize (approx. $81,600) each going to the men's and women's winner. The first runner-up receives 5 million Yen (approx. $40,800) and the losers of the opening matches will finish tied for third place, worth 1.5 million Yen apiece (approx. $12.240).

    MakuhariMesseTokyoJapan.jpg The international preliminaries will be held at Shinagawa Prince Hotel bowling center Thursday and Friday, July 9 & 10. The qualifying round of the main event and the semifinals will follow Saturday, July 11, at Round1 Minamisuma bowling center, which will also host the local preliminaries.

    The finals (to be broadcasted by TV Tokyo) will be conducted on Sunday, July 12, in a special six-lane bowling arena installed in an exhibition hall at Makuhari-Messe, a convention center outside Tokyo (pictured right).

    The Organizing Committee has chosen the 43-foot Tokyo oil pattern, one of the long patterns from the World Bowling bank of patterns. The Tokyo pattern will be used in all three tournament venues.

    In addition the OC has announced that bowlers can register maximum six bowling balls during the whole tournament and cannot change or add balls. Only registered balls are allowed.

    For the latest information, please click here or on the tournament logo on the right bar.

    WBTLogo_small.jpg The 2015 World Bowling Tour, which actually got underway in November 2014, currently consists of 20 tournaments in the Middle East (8), United States (7), Asia (3) and Europe (2) including eight "majors" and 12 regular tournaments.

    Players earn ranking points based on how they finish in each event. The current points system is based on a continuous two-year cycle, so some points earned in 2013 and all points from the 2014 and 2015 are added to determine the points list.

    The top three men and top three women in the WBT points list will be invited to compete in the 2015 World Bowling Tour Finals in the beginning of 2016.

    World Bowling provides governance to international bowling and is made up of 134 bowling international federations. For more information on the World Bowling Tour, click here.

     


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