Frederick Ong finished with one gold, three silvers and one bronze.
JAKARTA - Bowler Frederick Ong groped for form in the finals of the men's masters and had to settle for the silver medal, falling to Malaysia's Adrian Ang, 431-390, in their two-game series at the Jaya Ancol Bowling Center in North Jakarta.
The 29-year-old Ong, playing in his first SEA Games, appeared to be on track to bag his second gold medal after topping the 16-game series featuring the top 16 male players. But Ang proved steadier in the finals as he went on to claim his third gold medal of the Games.
Another Filipino, Biboy Rivera, missed out on the three-man stepladder finals by finishing fourth, 25 pins behind Malaysian Muhd Syafiq Ridhwan. Rivera inched up to third after 15 games with a total of 3,372 pinfalls, a solitary pin ahead of Ridhwan, setting up a do-or-die game between the two for a slot in the finals.
Ridhwan started off strong with five consecutive strikes, but Rivera came back in the middle frames with a few strikes of his own to stay in the game. But the Filipino, gold medalist in last year's Asian Games, could only come up with a split in the critical ninth frame that doomed his bid and allowed Ridwhan to coast to victory, 213-197.
Ong topped the first block yesterday with an aggregate of 1,779, and Rivera coming in second just 33 pins behind. Ridhwan was third, 29 pins behind Rivera. While Ong started out strong, rolling games of 217 and 279 in games 9 and 10, Rivera slipped to fifth with back-to-back sub-200 games of 197 and 165. This allowed Ridhwan to move up to second and fellow Malaysian Zulmazran Zulkifli to snatch third.
In the 11th game, Ang came out of nowhere and jumped to second with a 269, while Ridhwan slipped a notch to third. Despite a 194 in the 11th game, Ong never relinquished his hold of the top spot, leaving Rivera, Ang and Ridwhan to jostle for the last two berths in the stepladder finals.
Rivera rolled a big 253 in the 15th game to overtake Ridhwan , but just couldn't get the breaks in the last game. Meanwhile, Ong left nothing to chance and rolled a solid 247 to hold off Ang, whose 258 was not enough to dislodge the Filipino from top spot.
Ridhwan and Ang faced off in a one-game playoff for the right to play Ong in the two-game series for the gold medal, with Ang prevailing, 201-183.
In the first game, Ong led Ang up to the sixth frame, but a 9 in the seventh proved costly as the Malaysian answered with a strike to wrest the lead. Ong still had a chance to regain control after rolling back-to-back strikes in the eighth and ninth frame, but was unable to roll a third strike in the 10th rack that would have allowed him to snatch the win at the end. Instead, he settled for a spare which Ang matched to give the Malaysian a close 206-201 win.
Needing to beat Ang by at least six pins in the second game, Ong again seized the early lead. But he shot himself in the foot with 9s in the sixth and eighth frames, while Ang rolled three strikes in a row to win going away, 225-189.
Ong thus ended his maiden campaign with one gold, three silvers and one bronze. "Getting another silver is okay, although the team was aiming for two golds," he said afterwards.
Malaysia emerged as the overall champion with 5-3-6, followed by Singapore with 3-2-2 and the Philippines with 1-4-1. Thailand was fourth with a single gold, while Indonesia was 0-1-1.
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