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2004 Super Series Kungsbacka, Sweden Stop #4

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:42:16 GMT

2004 Super Series Kungsbacka, Sweden

Dates: December 13-19, 2004

Bowling Center : Kungsbacka Bowling and Squash Center
Number of Lanes: 16
Age of Center: ???
Surface: Murrey Pathfinder (@14 years old)
Pinsetters: Brunswick A-2's
Pins: Brunswick Glow Max
Scoring: Viking
Conditioner: KBT Offense HV
Cleaner: KBT Fizzion
Lane Machines: (1) Kustodian Plus

I was picked up at the airport by Peder Magnusson from KBC Trading AB. He took me with the machine and all of the supplies needed to the Kungsbacka Bowling and Squash center to take care of the lanes for the tournament. This has always been one of my favorite stops not only because the host proprietor Jorgen Lundin is such a great host, but there is also a hotel under the same roof as the bowl and there is plenty of room behind the lanes to store supplies and work on the lane machine between squads. If I get tired watching the bowling, I can just walk upstairs and crash in the room for a while. Perfect scenario for the lane man.

Traditionally this has usually been a high scoring tournament. We were trying to get scores a little higher for this years tournament but we had to go with a different pattern design this year because we were using the transfer brush instead of the wiper bar system from the last 2 years. We went in with a base pattern, but after putting it out it appeared to be a little too tight on the outsides and the tapes reflected it. The tapes also showed that the taper from foul line to head pin was fairly flat, only about 2 to 1 and it was a gradual taper from about 10ft. With the surface getting a little older, it seemed like the ball was picking up a little early just past the arrows around the 20-25 foot mark, and I felt in order to get scores a little higher the ball was going to need to push a little longer, so we started transposing more of the loads from the forward run and putting them in the reverse. That way we keep the same amount of volume for durability (@22 milliliters), but we concentrate more of the oil in the reverse pass where it's needed. We did the same thing in Vienna and that seemed to result in pretty good ball motion from front to back. There was pretty good hold in the middle with the original pattern, but not in proportion to the amount of swing. Between putting more loads in the reverse and taking some of the existing loads and making them narrower, the swing area began to increase.

The scores were pretty high. It ended out taking a score of 1365 to make the top 44, making it the highest scoring Super Series tournament to date. Congratulations to Oskar Brostrom for winning his first Super Series tournament. Also congratulations to Or Aviram from Israel for finishing in the 3-4 spot. He was the 44 th qualifier and bowled 24 games on Sunday to make it to the show, losing to Oskar in the semifinal.

I want to especially thank Jorgen Lundin, Annette Johansson, Ove Wikstrom and all of the staff at the Kungsbacka Bowling and Squash Center . This has always been one of my favorite tournaments to go to and they have always gone out of their way to make me feel right at home. Thanks so much again and I hope things work out where I get to come back next year.

John Janawicz

If you have KOSI , you may download the pattern by right clicking the KOSI icon below and choosing "Save Target As..." from the menu. Save this pattern to any directory on your hard drive where it can be imported by KOSI.

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Oskar Broström Dominates at the Kungsbacka International

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:38:26 GMT

Oskar Broström Dominates
at the Kungsbacka International

By: Brandy Padilla

The final Super Series and European Bowling Tour (EBT) event of the year, the Kungsbacka International 2004, was held December 13 - December 19 at the Kungsbacka Bowling Center in Sweden. Many bowlers participated but only 48 made it to the match play rounds.

Hundreds of bowlers participated in qualifying rounds competing for one of the top 44 spots. During each of the qualifying rounds, participants bowl 6 games changing lanes after each game. Players have the option of re-entering to better their scores. After the qualifying rounds are completed, the top 44 bowlers are seeded according to the qualifying scores. Leading the top 44 was Erik Andersin of Sweden with a score of 1543 followed by Tomas Leandersson, also of Sweden , with 1535.

A desperado round is also held. During the desperado round, any bowler can enter the 'last chance' single game competition in an effort to win one of the remaining four spots. The top four scorers from the desperado round are seeded in positions 44 - 48 and move ahead to match play. The depsarado round was won by Mikko Ylitalo of Finland with a score of 278 followed closely by countrywoman Reija Lundén with 275.

With qualifying and the desperado completed, the real competition starts heating up.

Round 1 of match play places seeds 33 - 48 in head - to - head, best of five competitions. Simply put, the first player to win three games moves ahead in the competition. Eight players move ahead to compete against seeds 25 - 32 in Round 2. Round 3 places the round 2 winners against seeds 17 -24. The round 3 winners move ahead to compete against seeds 9 - 16 in round 4. In the final round of cuts, the winners of round 4 face-off against seeds 1 - 8. From there, eight players move into the quarterfinals.

During the quarterfinals, Or Aviram became the first player to make it to the semi-final match defeating Paul Moor 3 - 0. Mathias Olsson defeated Kai Virtanen, who recently won the World Cup, 3 - 1. Petri Mannonen defeated Christer Danielsson in a very close 3 - 2 match having only a few pins difference in each of the five games. In the last quarterfinal match, Oskar Broström defeated Christer Pettersson 3 - 2. The four winners now move into the single game elimination semi-final match.

Match one seeded Mathias Olsson against Petri Mannonen. After a very close 204 - 200 match, Mathias Olsson emerged victorious. Match 2 seeded Oskar Broström against Or Aviram. With a nice score of 255, Oskar advanced to the final match.

In the final match, Oskar Broström faced Mathias Olsson. Oskar emerged as the winner shooting 207 to Olsson's 184.

Oskar Broström, Winner of the 2004 Kungsbacka International

For his win, Oskar earned 8600 Euros; a little more than $11,000 US. Knowing the extra money would be useful for his upcoming wedding must have been his extra motivation.

2004 Norwegian Open Super Series Stop #3

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:33:33 GMT

2004 Norwegian Open Super Series Stop #3

Super Series Tournament in Norway

By: Steve Cross

After an absence of more than a year, The Foundation returned to the Scandinavian Countries to provide the lane maintenance for the Super Series Tournament. I had the privilege of going to Norway for this event, the 2 nd Norwegian Open. This particular tournament was contested at Bowling 1 Lanes in Moss, Norway from September 25 th thru October 3 rd , 2004.

Since this is my first time being in Norway, I always like to start the "lines-of-communication" early. During this time period (as you all might know), Florida was just getting over hurricane Charley. This catastrophe left Floridians without power and all phone lines down for a week, some places longer. If that wasn't inconvenient enough, here comes hurricane Frances which took the same track, but from the other side of the state. Tracking both hurricanes, both of their paths came through Lake Wales, which we all know is where Kegel's new facility is located.

I flew out of Orlando to Oslo on the 21 st of September with Hurricane Ivan buzzing the west coast of Florida and going north to the panhandle, and hurricane Jean and Karl following me up to Norway. Finding out later in the week that "Jean" decided to take a left turn and end up in my own back yard creating more damage, as if Charley and Frances didn't do enough damage.

I arrived in Oslo, Norway where I rented a car and took the hour-and-a-half drive to Moss where the tournament was being held. I had three days to set up and to determine the pattern. The oiling pattern was based on a prototype that we started with for this Tournament. Bowling 1 Lanes has 16-lanes with a 5-year old Pro-Anvilane synthetic surface. We used a new Kustodian Plus lane machine; Offense-HV lane conditioner and Pure cleaner.

The tournament started on Saturday the 25 th and ended on the 3 rd of October, attracting 340 bowlers, including re-entries and a full "Desperado Squad". It took a score of +81 to make the first cut into match play. All styles left to right were represented and all angles (out, up and inside) were playable. Ball speed and not setting the ball short was critical for good pin-carry and consistency. I feel as a result of this overall consistency, many of the top bowlers entered fared very well, with: Tim Mack of USA taking 4th place, Svein Roger Olsen of Norway in 3rd, Anders Ohman of Sweden in 2nd and Kimmo Lehtonen of Finland winning the event..

One other note that I would like to mention was the weather which stayed around the high 60's in the daytime and in the low 50's at night with low humidity. This type of weather reminded me of the Indian Summers that I was used to, when I lived in the northern part of the U.S.

Overall, I felt that the tournament went very well, and I can't thank the following people enough; Agnethe Brynhildsen (Bowl Manager.), Egil Hansen (Head Mechanic), Linda Bolstad and Rolf Thommesen. All of the help and the long hours that they gave me helped to make the Super Series Tournament a success. Hopefully, I can return again next year - without any hurricanes.

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2004 Olympia Tournament Super Series Stop #2

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:23:29 GMT

2004 Olympia Tournament Super Series Stop #2

ARUP "Erupts" Against The BIG BOYS

By John Forst

The movers and shakers of bowling worldwide have been trying to get involved with the Olympics for quite a while, but this months Super Series tournament in Helsingborg, Sweden was not televised due to those Olympics being contested and televised, the biggest sporting event in the world. This particular tournament was held during the second week of August which gave notice to the Scandinavian bowlers that their summer is over and it is time to start bowling seriously again. Unfortunately, only 148 different bowlers appeared at Olympic Lanes for the tournament, as it was the best week of weather Sweden has had for the whole summer.

Helsingborg is known as the Swedish Riviera and this tournament had a few extra curricular activities to fill the week starting with the Super Camp, which were 2-full days of lectures and lane play from the past Team USA Head Coach Fred Borden. As usual, his extremely well thought out Advanced Adjustments Program was well presented. Team USA's Bill Hoffman and Sweden's Head Coach Magnus Johnson also helped at the camp. A Golf outing was held on Monday and the famous Patrick Backe beach party (Patrick is one of the owners of Olympic Bowl) was held on Wednesday evening which kept the bowlers entertained and relaxed.

During the tournament we used the new Kustodian Plus to condition the lanes, and used Offence HV for the lane conditioner. Pure (mixed at 5-to-1 ratio) was used for the lane cleaner. The pattern used 23.56 mls. of conditioner; 17.60 mls. on the forward pass and 5.96 mls. on the reverse pass. The bowling center has a new (one-year old) Via lane surface. Via lanes have probably the surface with the most friction, so we had to apply a little more conditioner and flatten the front-to-back taper to keep the pattern from drastically breaking down. The ratio of the pattern was 3.00 to 1 from 20-board to 2-board and the pattern was symmetrical left-to-right.

In the qualifying the cut score was 1322 for 44 th place, and the 4 "Desperado" spots took a score of 242 (or better) to make the match play. The high qualifier was Pasi Uotila of Finland with a score of 1469 for 6-games and the high game was from Sweden's Mathias Lundin with a 297 game. Denmark's Anja Ginge Jensen was the sole female to qualify for the match play portion of the tournament with a score of 1328, qualifying in 40 th place. The tournament had 6 left-handed bowlers make the top 48 with 2 of them finishing in 9 th through 16 th place.

In the Quarterfinal matches there may have been a preview of this years PBA tour which had Norway's Tore Torgersen defeating Finland's Mika Koivuniemi 268 to 187 to advance to the finals. In the other match Mathias Arup, a journeymen bowler from Sweden who manages to always make the cash cut in all of the Super Series and past Super Six events, bowled against America's Tim Mack and defeated Tim 237 to 206.

The final match saw a ringing 10-pin in the first shot of the 10th frame to shut down Tore's chance at another Super Series win as Mathias out-scored Tore 227 to 218. Congratulations to Mathias in his first victory in the Super Series and a deserved win as he had worked very hard over the summer on his game and making the big decision over whether or not to keep banging his head against the big boys.

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2004 Aalborg International Super Series Stop #1

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:55:45 GMT

2004 Aalborg International Super Series Stop #1

A "Taste of Victory" was perfect for "Beef Stew"

The first tournament of the Super Series 2004-2005 season started in Aalborg, Denmark in May, and chants for: "Beef Stew" went out as Stuart Williams of England defeated Kimmo Lehtonnen of Finland for his first victory in the Super Series tour, by a final score of: 234 to 176. "Beef Stewart" had a perfect day as he never lost so much as one game during his 3, best of 5 sets in the 'Knock-out' finals, and he continued his hot streak on the televised show.

The tournament brought in 221-bowlers from 19-different countries through the hard work and endless dedication of Kim Thorsgaard Jensen, who is the Managing Director of the Lovvang Bowling Center where the event was held. Kim has a busy schedule as he is also the European Tenpin Bowling Federation Vice-President and can be seen at many of the WTBA events world wide. This tournament is one of the European ranking point's tournaments; so many bowlers are trying to accumulate enough points to get to the World Ranking Masters tournament.

The surface at Lovvang is Brunswick Pro Anvilane and it is 4-years old. The lane surface topography, although fairly flat to slightly depressed, had the players on their toes making adjustments when changing pairs after each game. The conditioner used was Offense HV and Defense C. was used at 4 to1, ratio to clean the lanes. The pattern was 38-feet with the forward oil applied to 20-feet, and the return oil started at 30-feet. The pattern was designed to play outside (around the first arrow) and fairly straight, which might be why some of the name players didn't keep up with the revolution challenged bowlers. The pattern was shifted by 1 1/.2 boards on the left to have the lefties play straighter, but still between the 1 st and 2 nd arrow.

The pattern ratio was as follows: 2L/20 = 3.40, 5L/20 = 2.13, 10L/20 = 1.06, 15L/20 = 1.00

2R/20 = 3.40, 5R/20 = 1.89, 10R/20 = 1.00, 15R/20 = 1.00

Several of the name players, like: Tim Mack, Bill Hoffman, Arturo Quintero, Gery Verbruggen, and Patrick Backe all failed to make the "Knock-out" finals as the cut was 1351 for 6-games of qualifying. It was led by Swedish ladies national team member Helen Johnsson with 1507 for 6-games, including 48-pins of handicap. Only one lefty made it to the 'Knock-out" 48 player finals, as Lehtonnen ended up finishing in 2nd place. The pin-carry was not as good for any of the players who tried to make the ball hook a lot on the backend, which might explain why the name bowlers didn't fair as well in this tournament. There were 3-300 games shot, as Linda Haglund, Martin Blixt, and Tobias Karlsson (all from Sweden) earning the perfect games.

TV show:

Semi Finals Game 1: (TIE) Stuart Williams (England) 256 Tobias Karlsson (Sweden) 256.

(Stuart Williams won in second shot of the roll-off with a strike.)

Semi Finals Game 2: Kimmo Lehtonnen (Finland) 263 def. Tomas Leandersson (Sweden) 223

3-4 th place paid $3,400 euros or approx. $4000 US

Finals:

Stuart Williams (England) 234 1 st place paid $11,000 Euros or approx. $13,260 US

Kimmo Lehtonnen (Finland) 176 2 nd place paid $ 6,000 Euros or approx. $ 7,233 US

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Super Series

Bruce — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:51:47 GMT

SuperSeries

The Super Series is a new European Bowling Tour open to amateurs and professional from around the world. The tour began in 2003 and held its first tournament, the inaugural Brunswick Aalborg International, in May.

The Super Series is actually a spin-off of the popular Super Sixxxxxx Tour in Sweden . Bowlers compete in qualifying rounds in an effort to be one of the top 44. Multiple rounds are held and rules vary but in most cases multiple re-entries are allowed. Each player bowls six games of qualifying vying for one of the top 44 scores. There are also four (4) desperado spots. Players bowl in a 'last chance' single game elimination where the top four scorers advance to the match play rounds.

The top 48 bowlers are then seeded according to their qualifying scores. The highest qualifying score is seeded first; the second highest score is seeded second and so on. Spots 45 - 48 are seeded according to the highest single game from the desperado round. The field is then split into groups for head - to - head match play competition. Group 1 is positions 33 - 48. Players bowl in a 'best - of - five' format. The player who wins three moves ahead in competition. The eight winners then compete against players 25 - 32 in the same format. Eight winners from that group move to compete against players 17 - 24. Round 4 places those eight winners against ranks 9 - 16. Round 5 places ranks 1 - 8 against the winners of Round 4. Round 6 is the quarter final round. Best - of - five match play is still the format as the top eight compete for a spot in the semi-finals. The semi-finals, Round 7, is a single game elimination round. The two winners move on to compete in a single game, final match where a champion is crowned.

Information on the Super Series Tour can be found at their website: www.superseries.org.