Marcus Zuber (pictured) from Germany finished his six-game qualifying block with a 269 game en route to move into fifth place in the Singles qualifying of the 6th Columbia 300 Vienna Open in Austria. Zuber led Squad 7 on Thursday afternoon at Plus Bowling in Vienna with 1313 pinfall total to became just the fifth player in this year's event, who cracked the 1300-bar.

Alexander Rauscher from Austria leads the field since Squad 3 with 1367 pinfall total and an average of 227.83.

His compatriot Michael Loos is second with 1346. He is followed by the duo that leads the doubles event, Uwe Tscharke, Germany and Austrian Michael Mayer, who sit in third and fourth place with 1332 and 1326, respectively.

Anne Gales (pictured right) from Denmark was next to Zuber with 1253 including 48 pins handicap to become the top-ranked female bowler in 13th place.

Gales' compatriots Bo Winther (1247), Mikael Larsson (1229) and Anders Vorborg (1211) were in third through fifth place. All other players bowled under 1200 or less than 200 in average.

Winther (pictured left) is in sixth place in the overall standings with his 1279 high series. Larsson sits in 16th place with Vorborg in 20th place.

Gales and Michal Rec, also from Denmark, were the best doubles in Squad 7. Rec added 1134 to Gales' 1253 to move into sixth place in the standings with 2387 pinfall total.

Photos Lars Müller.

The Vienna Open, the 14th stop of the 2008 European Bowling Tour and one of the Tour's "Major", will be held from Sep. 30 - Oct. 5, in Vienna, Austria.

More than 290 players will compete for total prize money of 65.630 Euro - 55.400 € in Singles and 10.230 € in Doubles. The singles champion will receive the 6.000 € top prize while the doubles winners will split 1.600 €.

In last year's title match, Swede Dennis Eklund (pictured right) defeated Yoan Alix, France, 235-199, en route to win his first EBT title. Tina Hulsch, Germany, won the women's rankings.

Once again the qualifying for the Vienna Open finals is contested as a doubles tournament. Each duo rolls at least one six-game block. Unlimited re-entries with different partners are possible but each player can only cash once with the same partner.

The team with the highest total pinfall including handicap will be declared the winner (no finals will be played). The top 20 doubles will cash.

Stuart Williams, England, and Germany's Tina Hulsch are the defending champions (pictured left).

Qualifying runs from Tuesday through Saturday and ends with the ultimate one-game Desperado Squad on Saturday night Oct. 4 slated for 11.30 pm local time (GMT +1).


A total of 64 players from the qualifying will advance to the finals starting on Sunday, Oct. 5 at 8am:

• The top 8 players with the highest six-game qualifying result will earn one bye and will be seeded 1-8 in the match play Round of 32
• players positioned 9th to 52nd after qualifying
• the six leaders of Squads 1-6 and
• the top 6 from the Desperado Squad.

All but the top 8 qualifiers (60 players overall) will bowl 6 games starting from scratch to cut to the top 24. Those 24 will be seeded 9-32 in the match play Round of 32.

The Round of 32, 16 and 8 will feature single-elimination match play in best-of-three games format. The highest seeded player bowls the lowest seeded player, the second-highest seeded player vs. the second-lowest seeded player, etc.

The semifinals (No. 1 vs. No. 4 and No. 2 vs. No. 3) and the championship match will be decided in one game. A major on the European Bowling Tour, the top 50 men and the top 50 women will receive double ranking points.

For more information on the 6th Columbia 300 Vienna Open click here.