By BILL SNIER
PARMA HEIGHTS — The PWBA BowlTV Open came down to a rematch of the 2024 event in Smyrna, Tenn.
But revenge, according to Singapore 33-year-old right-hander New Hui Fen, was not in the equation.
“It’s all about ball shape and ball motion,” New said after defeating fellow Singapore resident Cherie Tan 233-206 for her third career Professional Women’s Bowling Association title Saturday at Yorktown Lanes.
“I’m not worried about the person I’m bowling against. It’s not going to do me any good. It’s not tennis, right?”
This event was the second during the PWBA Summer Series — Cleveland. A year ago, the two Singapore teammates met in the same event at the PWBA Classic Series in Tennessee, with Tan emerging with a 269-206 win for her fifth career title.
New was one of four Singapore bowlers to make the 12-person cut to match play in the event after none made the cut during the first Summer Series event, the PWBA Cleveland Open.
“To travel so far and prepare so much for this and have it pay off … it feels good. It feels satisfying,” said New, who becomes the second Singapore bowler to record a PWBA win this season, joining Shayna Ng’s win in Topeka, Kan.
STEPLADDER START
The stepladder began with 2023 Cleveland Open champion Jordan Snodgrass, a 29-year-old Adrian, Mich., right-hander, facing 42-year-old five-time champion and Dayton left-hander Shannon Pluhowsky.
Snodgrass left a 2-8-10 split early to fall behind, but was able to rally while striking on six of her next seven shots in search of her sixth title.
Pluhowsky managed to stay clean throughout the match, running off three straight strikes into the 10th to take back the lead. Needing a mark in the 10th to rally again, Snodgrass left a 2-10 split and fell 225-213.
Pluhowsky then faced seven-time winner and Junior Team USA coach Kelly Kulick, who was making her second straight top-five appearance during the Summer Series.
Again, Pluhowsky was able to stay clean throughout the match, adding a double early and three strikes again into the 10th frame.
Kulick, who got a break in the first frame by tripping a late 10-pin to prevent a 7-10 split, missed the 7-pin spare. She left another 7-pin in the second — and barely converted, saying to the fans, “I wasn’t worried.”
But after a double, she left a 4-9 split in the fifth and then failed to convert another 7-pin spare in the eighth as the Dayton lefty advanced with a 211-171 win.
But staying clean throughout her third match against Fen wasn’t enough.
After leaving a 2-10 split in the second frame and having just two strikes through the first five, Fen ran off five straight strikes. Pluhowski had three of her own into the 10th, but left a 4-pin on her second shot in the 10th to fall 224-217.
TITLE MATCH
Tan, a 37-year-old left-hander who finished as the No. 3 qualifier and earned the top seed following 12 games of match play by averaging a tourney-high 239.92, was able to strike on three of her first four shots in the title match.
But she also left five 7-pins, converting four but missing a critical spare in the eighth frame.
Fen, who also struck on three of her first four shots, left a 3-4-6-7 split in the fifth. But she recovered to run off five straight strikes into the 10th to earn the win.
“I was really leaning on the ball reps and my coach. They kept telling me to play the hold,” New said of the 47-foot BowlTV Open oil pattern. “There was a lot of hold out there. If I had trouble, I just continued to move left until I found the hold or made a ball change.”
New used the Storm Ion Max on fresh oil and a combination of the Roto Grip Attention Star and Attention Star S2 to find her hold.
Her exploits did not go unnoticed in her native country.
““The back-to-back successes of Hui Fen and Shayna Ng, on top of Darren Ong’s PBA triumph just a month earlier, mark a major milestone for Singapore bowling on the global stage,” Singapore Bowling Federation president Valerie Tea told https://www.straitstimes.com/
“These achievements are compelling evidence of our athletes’ ability to compete and win, at the highest levels of the sport. They affirm Singapore’s growing reputation as a rising force in international bowling.”
A year ago, Tan was the No. 1 seed in two events during the Classic Series in Tennessee, losing to Malaysia’s Sin Li Jane 257-208 in the finals of the series opener.
Can New replicate her teammate’s performance in Cleveland?
“I’m already thinking about tomorrow. I need to reset and recover,” Tan said. “I need to take a long shower and sleep well tonight.”
The final event, the PWBA Rock and Roll Open, begins at 10 a.m. Sunday.
MATCH PLAY
As with the first event of the series, the position-round matches determined the top five for Saturday’s BowlTV Open.
Only 21 pins separated No. 4 seed Pluhowski from No. 7 seed Rocio Restrepo, a Colombia native now living in Kent who was making her second straight match-play appearance in the series.
It was Pluhowski, who defeated Kulick 225-219, and Snodgrass, who stopped Li Jane Sin 224-192, who earned the final two spots. Restrepo defeated Singapore’s Arianna Tay 224-211, but fell 11 pins short of the top five.
A pair of 7-10 splits in her Game 7 loss led to a 179 and disaster for the 37-year-old four-time PWBA champion. Players earned 30 bonus pins for wins and 15 for ties.
NOTEBOOK: Only the top 17 players averaged 215 or higher during the Cleveland Open. The top 44 did the same in the BowlTV Classic on a different pattern, with seven 300 games being thrown during qualifying. … Kulick, following her problems in the stepladder, went directly to the practice pair and practiced during the next two matches, concentrating on shooting corner-pin spares. … The third event of the series, the Rock ’n’ Roll Open, begins with a six-game qualifying round at 10 a.m., followed by a second six-game round at 5 p.m. on the 44-foot Rock ’n’ Roll oil pattern. The field will then be cut to the top 16 for bracket match play Monday, beginning at 9 a.m. … The Monday match play will be a different format, with the top 16 meeting in best-of-five matches by seed, with the winners advancing to a second best-of-five round at 2 p.m. The final four will then meet in single-elimination matches, with the final two bowling for the title. … Tickets are $15 per round or $20 for an all-day pass. … They Singapore delegation includes seven players overall, who will bowl through the U.S. Women’s Open.