By BILL SNIER
PARMA HEIGHTS — The beat goes on in the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the 2026 Professional Women’s Bowling Association Tour.
Nine events this season. Nine different winners.
And the PWBA Player of the Year Award still very much in doubt.
Shayne Ng, a 36-year-old Singapore right-hander, became the latest first-time winner Thursday in capturing the PWBA Cleveland Open at Yorktown Lanes.
Ng, who won her fourth career title, stopped Jordan Snodgrass 195-186 in the title match to earn the $10,000 top prize.
It came after Ng had started Wednesday’s qualifying rounds with a 144 out of the gate.
“During the practice session, I thought the outside line was the right way to start,” Ng said. “So, I started there and everybody else went left, and boom, 144. The next game I moved left and shot 216 and then 259. The rest is history.”
She finished third after 12 qualifying games, averaging 216.92, before moving to the top of the leaderboard and securing the No. 1 seed by compiling an 8-4 match-play record and stopping Snodgrass in the final position round match to earn it by 52 pins (5,438 total pinfall).
“(After the U.S. Women’s Open) I had more confidence as all four patterns there were really tough, so I thought ‘OK, let’s see where this goes because I still have to bowl well during Tour Championship Week,’ ” said Ng, who was in 24th place in the point standings heading into the week. “I knew that I had to keep going and keep doing things that give me confidence.”
WONG MAKES STEPLADDER RUN
The stepladder finals began with Canadian left-hander Felicia Wong taking on No. 5 seed Maria Jose Bohr, a Colombia right-hander who needed a position-round match win over fellow Colombian native Rocio Restrepo-Hostetler to advance.
Wong, seeking her first career PWBA title on “National Left-handers Day,” was able to put a run of five straight strikes together from the fifth through ninth frames to secure a 217-177 win.
Bohr opened with a 6-7 split and did not have a strike until throwing one on a crossover shot after a ball change in the ninth frame.
Wong then faced six-time PWBA champion New Hui Fen in the quarterfinals. New, who won twice in the 2025 PWBA Summer Series also held at Yorktown, is the defending PWBA Player of the Year and currently leads the points race with 73,400.
With one title this season, New had a chance to put her stamp on retaining the award against Wong. But a 2-10 split in the fifth frame along with a missed 1-2-4 spare in the 10th around a run of four strikes enabled Wong to secure a 208-202 win.
Wong, despite failing to convert a 2-7 split in the third, again had a run of five strikes to secure the win.
But a failed spare conversion, missing a 7-pin, was Wong’s undoing in the semifinals against Snodgrass, a 30-year-old Adrian, Mich., right-hander and the 2023 PWBA Player of the Year who won at Yorktown during that season.
Snodgrass left a 4-6-7-10 split in the third frame, but then converted a 2-4-6-10 split in the fourth before running off five straight strikes to secure a 229-204 win.
CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
With one win also this season among her seven career titles, Snodgrass was sitting third in the points race coming into the week a year after winning the high average award.
But Ng started the title match with a double while Snodgrass had just two strikes and four 9-count spares through the first six frames.
Ng gave Snodgrass an opening in the sixth, failing to convert a 3-10 split. She would have just one strike the rest of the way.
“I had to make some adjustments after I left a 9-pin and then almost leaving a 4-9,” Ng said. “I thought I threw a good shot but I left a flat-10 (ninth frame following a strike) and then I did the same thing again (10th frame).
“This is bowling and you can only do so much. It was too much of a risk to make a ball change at that point.”
Snodgrass with a strike up in the seventh, left a 2-pin spare in the eighth — and failed to convert. After a strike in the ninth she left a 9-pin spare on her first ball in the 10th frame to set up the 10th for Ng.
“I would expect Jordan to make every spare so it came out to my advantage,” Ng said. “It was me against the lanes … just try to make the right moves and make the right shots at the right time.”
It marked the second year in a row at Yorktown that Snodgrass has been snake bit in the finals. During the 2025 Summer Series:
- In the semifinals of the Rock & Roll Open,, she also failed to convert a 2-pin spare during a 245-244 loss to Diana Zavjalova during one of two semifinal matches as New won the title; and
- She left a 2-10 split in the 10th frame and failed to convert in the opening stepladder match against Shannon Pluhowsky in the BowlTV Open en route to a 225-213 loss as New again earned the win.
“Felicia was running the ladder and I was prepared for her, but at the end of the day, it’s just me and the lanes,” Ng said. “I was just trying to make good shots, and the left lane was starting to get tricky, which is why I chose to end on the right lane. I stayed alert and ahead of the moves, kept it in the pocket and hoped that it struck.”
But there still is one more event remaining — qualifying begins Friday for the PWBA Pepsi Open — before all 2026 Tour winners and the top 24 from the points list begin competing in the PWBA Tour Championship on Sunday.
Seven Singapore bowlers are in the field this week — and they hope to join Ng and New as winners at Yorktown.
“We are a long way from home and that makes it more difficult,” Ng said of her road “family.” “We don’t want this to be a wasted trip. We are all very thankful to be here and we know it’s not cheap to send us here.
“More than anything else, we want to do well.”