Many of the world’s top players are in Kuwait this week for the World Bowling Tour/PBA 13^th Kuwait International Open, and the scores have been simply astronomical.

Players could bowl numerous qualifying squads to post their best five-game total, and after 20 squads, Australia’s Sam Cooley earned top qualifier honors with a total of 1,409, an astonishing 281.80 average.

Of the 112 players who competed in the event, 82 of them posted a qualifying average of at least 240 per game. In order to make the cut on the men’s side, it took a 261.80 average. The event features a $50,000 first-place prize and will award a PBA Tour title if the winner is a PBA member.

So why are the scores so high at the event? For starters, the players bowled their five-game qualifying rounds on the same pair of lanes. There were also only two players on a pair for qualifying.

Combine that with a soft lane condition and the use of World Bowling’s current frame scoring system and you get high scores. The scoring system awards 30 pins for a strike, while a spare equals 10 pins plus the pinfall of the first shot and an open equals the pinfall for the frame.

Under this scoring system, players only need to throw 10 strikes to shoot a 300 game and there were numerous 300 games in qualifying. Cooley actually started off his big block with a 300 game and followed it with 289, 276, 278 and 266.

Iceland’s Arnar Jonsson was the second-highest qualifier with 1,396, a 279.20 average, while Hong Kong’s Michael Mak posted a 1,381 total to finish third.

Denmark’s Thomas Larsen was fourth with 1,375, England’s Stuart Williams was fifth with 1,366 and Nick Pate was sixth with 1,364.

The six highest players plus the highest female and highest Kuwaiti earned a two-round bye into the finals. PWBA star Danielle McEwan was the high female with 1,302, while Mostafa Almousawi was the top Kuwaiti player with 1,335.

Eight other players, including two women, earned one-round byes. Those players were Martin Larsen, Ildemaro Ruiz, Mika Koivuniemi, Dom Barrett, Khalid Albayudh, Brad Miller, Maria Jose Rodriguez and Liz Johnson.

The remaining 32 advancing players received no byes and will bowl the first round of the finals Tuesday. The top eight players in that five-game block will advance to Round 2 where they will join the players with one bye for a five-game round.

Eight players will advance from Round 2 into Round 3 and join the players with two byes for a five-game round that will determine the five stepladder finalists.

All pinfall is dropped after each round of competition.

The first and second rounds of the finals will take place Tuesday, while the third round and stepladder will take place Wednesday.

Qualifying Results

Results courtesy ABF-Online.org