Many veteran bowlers, coaches, observers and fans were left stunned when Italy shocked the world to win the five-player team event in Hong Kong this week at the 2018 World Bowling Men’s Championships.

The result was surprising because Italy finished just 22^nd at last year’s World Championships, didn’t compete in the previous two and was 28^th in 2010. Simply put, the Italians weren’t on anyone’s radar to make a run.

So, just how did the Italians pull off one of the biggest upsets in the history of the World Championships? Let’s take a look.

A huge finish to qualifying

The Italians certainly were not among the teams expected to make it out of qualifying let alone win the gold medal.

However, as the first round of team qualifying came to a close, Italy made a big move, shooting its biggest game (1,067) in qualifying to move into fifth position after the first day. That set the stage for a run in the final round.

After starting the final three games of qualifying with a 982 team game, the Italians rebounded with 1,025. But it was the final game of qualifying that really made the difference.

Sitting outside the top four heading into the final game, Italy put together a big 1,044 while the teams ahead of them struggled down the stretch. Indonesia managed just 927, while France had just 918, allowing the Italians to make it into the medal round.

A big chunk of that last game came thanks to a clutch performance by Italy’s Erik Davolio, who put up a massive 256 game to close out qualifying.

Canada didn't apply the pressure in semifinal

Italy was clearly the underdog on paper heading into the medal round, especially facing a tough Canadian team in the semifinal filled with current or former professional bowlers.

After getting off to a shaky start, Italy managed to pull things together in the final stages of the first game and had three quality strikes in the eighth, ninth and first shot in the 10^th to take the first game, 176-162.

It’s important to note that while Italy got the job done, the Canadians didn’t do their best to put intense pressure on the underdogs. In the final frame of that game, Canada’s Dan MacLelland could have struck on his fill ball to force Italian anchor Antonino Fiorentino to go nine, spare, strike to win.

MacLelland, however, left a 3-4-6-10 on his fill shot and Fiorentino just needed a good count spare and good count on the fill. With some of the pressure relieved, Fiorentino delivered a perfect strike.

Another factor in the semifinal was that Canada, as the top seed, had lane choice. The decision ended up biting them in the end as they lost both games on the lane they chose to start on with the left lane playing extremely tough.

In the deciding third game of the match, MacLelland was once again unable to put pressure on Italy when he opened in the final frame. Italy just needed count to win and got it.

Team USA makes too many mistakes in finale

By the time the gold-medal match started, Italy had already made history. The only previous medal they had ever won was a bronze in team event in 1971, so they were guaranteed a silver medal.

Why does that matter? Because Italy was bowling with absolutely nothing to lose, while the runaway favorite Team USA was bowling with everything to lose.

Although the Italians did not deliver a spectacular performance in the gold-medal match, they delivered an adequate performance, which was enough to unseat the defending champions.

In the two-game sweep of Team USA, 189-169 and 210-166, Italy did not miss any makeable spares. They only had one open – a 4-9 split in the ninth frame of Game 1.

Meanwhile, Team USA had critical makeable spare misses in both games. Chris Barnes missed the 2-8 and Andrew Anderson missed the 6-10 in the opening game, while Barnes missed the 1-2-4-8 in the second game.

Team USA never put any pressure on Italy throughout the finale, especially down the stretch. Tommy Jones had a chance to shut out Italy in the first game but left a 4-6-7-10 split to lose, a shot that he surely wishes he could have back.

The bottom line

Make no mistake, Italy winning the gold medal in team event at the World Championships was a tremendous upset and a shocking victory. However, they did just enough to win at every point along the way while taking advantage of some poor execution by their opponents.

You have to give a lot of credit to Italy for making shots when they had too even if the pressure was not applied by their opponents at a lot of key stages of their journey.

A lot of factors went into Italy’s victory. The lanes were extremely difficult on the 38-foot Los Angeles pattern and the Italians were able to stay relatively clean throughout their matches. That’s huge in a low-scoring environment. Plus, the best-of-three Baker format is a tremendous equalizer.

Italy got the job done. Canada didn’t and the United States didn’t. That’s the bottom line.