With Blocks of 494, 507 and 522, Victorian and dual Australian Masters Champion Mac Stewart bowled 212 & 236 to defeat South Australia’s Brenton Davy 178 & 227 to claim victory in the inaugural Ebonite Gold Coast International Sport Series Final for 2008…
Majors like this are sometimes about grinding it out and filling frames and doing those little things that are required. You also need some luck on your side." That’s certainly what this Tournament provided us throughout the weekend…
75 bowlers from all parts of Australia and New Zealand travelled to the very popular holiday destination, to qualify in 3-five game blocks on three different sports patterns, with pinfall and Match Play bonuses determining the makeup of the top 16 finalists…The patterns included, Pattern 1DEAD MANS CURVE, Pattern 2 HIGHWAY TO HELL, Pattern 3 WINDING ROAD…The finalists played on the BOARDWALK…
Stewart en route to his first ever television final defeated Queenslander George Frilingos 237, 257 (494) to 213, 224 (437), fellow Victorian David Porto 248, 259 (507) to 258, 215 (473) and Jason Walsh of New South Wales 235, 297 (522) to 245, 206 (451) in the semi finals…Trailing Walsh by ten pins leading into the final game of the semi-final, Mac went on a mission throwing the front 11 and a 7 count for 297 to Walsh’s 206…In the other side of the seeded draw, Davy defeated Queensland’s Tony Hamilton, 205, 259 (464) to 197, 247 (444), New South Wales’s Jarrod Lean 214, 226 (440) to 190, 211 (401) and Ashley Clarke 214, 215 (429) to 211, 208 (419) also of New South Wales…
The pre tournament held Friday evening had Michael Little setting an early pace for the main tournament… With three of the four patterns laid for this event 25 bowlers took advantage to play the patterns early…6 games over the three patterns had Little on top of the field with Davy second and Gold Coasts Jim Murray rounded out the top three…
The main tournament had Gold Coast’s Damian Banar setting an early pace of the day with 1128 and 5 wins for his 5 games…Squad 2 had Queensland’s Carl Bottomley, Northern Territory’s Bruno Maglieri, Queensland’s Brandon Qualischefski and Jason Walsh of New South Wales all gave chase and finished the top 4 respectively after the first pattern, Banar was relegated to fifth going into round two…
The second pattern was definitely the most challenging of the event, the scores and stressed faces showed…Brenton Davy charged to the lead with 1145 and still undefeated for his first 10 games; quiet an outstanding effort on these two patterns and given the quality of field… Brandon Qualischefski moved to second and Western Australia’s young 16 year old sensation Chris Watson cruised to 3rd and was also undefeated at this stage…
The third pattern was where the top 16 all started to take shape…Frilingos, Little and Walsh all filing the top 3 positions with one squad to go, and North Queensland bowler Denish Singm throwing his and the centres first ever perfect game of 300…overnight leader Brenton Davy loosing is first match of the weekend and missing the top qualifier for the finals by a mere 31 pins…Queensland Rachuig representative Luke Rafton smashed the pattern with a 251.4 average and maximum bonuses to take the top seed position leading into the elimination finals…
First Round Losers were
Carl Bottomley
George Frilingos
Michael Little
Brandon Qualischefski
Brad Reggars
Chris Watson
Tony Hamilton
Graeme Morgan
Second Round Losers
David Porto
Bruno Maglieri
Luke Rafton
Jarrod Lean
Semi Final losers
Ashley Clark
Jason Walsh
Highest 5 game block for those who did not cash in each Squad received a Ebonite Complete NV Ball
Damien Banar
Andrew Tonkin
Mitchell Bird
Ben Allen
Matt Kanafa
Jason Pearson
Surfers Paradise Lanes is a unique centre on the Gold Coast…It’s unique because of its location, water views from the concourse and the fact that it doesn’t have any league bowlers at all…It’s a sixteen lane centre in the heart of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast…Down the escalators and you have the whole city! Hundreds of Cafe’s, restaurants and entertainment at your feet…
To prepare for this event, owner Brian Kearney and his staff installed New Lighting, pins, landing areas and made plenty of machine and camera adjustments to make this event a huge success…Ebonite’s representative Andrew Cherrett was more then impressed with the amount of effort that went into preparing for this event…”It’s great the demo day was excellent and the whole event ran smoothly throughout the tournament” he said…
I would like to make Special Mention to Kellie of TotalBowling and Ben Allen for there efforts throughout the weekend with the scoring and running of this event…
Special mention and thank you to Mike Quitter - Ebonite and Andrew Cherrett of Bowlers Basement, for their support and sponsorship of this tournament…
Lee Matthey of Coco’s also for his support and sponsorship of this major event…Fruit and water they supplied also throughout this event…
Brian and Michael Kearney for their outstanding efforts to make this event run so smoothly without any machinery issues at all…and the use of their unique centre throughout the 3 days…
Congratulations’ to all the competitors and finalists on some outstanding scores…
