Team USA's Stefanie Nation, Sandra Gongora, Mexico, Anja Ginge Jensen, Denmark, and Krista Pöllänen from Finland finished 1-4 in the Singles preliminaries of the 2009 Women's World Championships en route to advance to the finals on Thursday, July 30.

Nation (pictured left) had games of 228, 257, 205, 242, 206 and 223 in Squad 1, an average of 226.83 over six games, and remained atop the leaderboard for the rest of the day.

Mexico's rising star Gongora (right) finished Squad 3 with a 237 game to jump into second place with 1357 (226.17) pinfall total.

Ginge (left), who led Squad 2 with 1347 (224.50) slipped to third place.

Pöllänen (right) was 11 pins behind Gongora in Squad 3 and beat out Colombia's Clara Juliana Guerrero, who was third after two squads with 1339, for the fourth and last spot to advance by six pins with 1345 (224.17).

The 228 women from 45 WTBA member federations were split into three squads to bowl six games on the Stockholm pattern, the shorter pattern of the two chosen by Technical delegate Daniel Falconi from Mexico.

You find the patterns here.

The top 4 players of the six-game preliminaries advanced to the finals on Thursday, July 30, 2009 starting at 5.30pm. The No. 1 (Nation) seed will bowl the No. 4 (Pöllänen) and No. 2 (Gongora) takes on No. 3 (Ginge) in the semifinals. The winners will bowl for the title and the losers will share the bronze medal. All matches are one-game matches.

The 2009 Women's World Championships consists of six disciplines. Players will compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in Singles, Doubles, Trios, Team and Masters competition before the event concludes Sunday. Medals also will be awarded for All Events.

The World Championships is being held on 60 specially constructed lanes inside Cashman Center and includes the world's largest mobile video scoreboard, an investment of nearly $6 million, spectator seating, office, vendor and pro shop space, a scale room, squad room, registration area and shipping department.

USBC plans to live stream portions of the event on bowl.com, and bowling fans around the world will be able to watch the finals and select semifinals.