WORLD CHAMP SULKANEN QUALIFIES FOR 2001 BOWLING WORLD CUP
Zulkifli, Greiner also win berths; former BWC champ Shaheen spurs men’s field

LONDON, ENGLAND, October 8, 2001 – One of the great names in women’s international bowling, Lena Sulkanen, has qualified to compete in the 2001 AMF Bowling World Cup, set for November 4-10 at PS Bowl in Pattaya, Thailand.

Sulkanen made her mark in the 1983 FIQ/WTBA World Championships as a member of Team Sweden, when she won the women’s singles and Masters playoffs and finished second in the grueling all-events competition. Her winning six-game singles total of 1,293 pins (for a 215.5 average) set a record that stood until 1995. Now residing in Denmark, the 41-year-old Sulkanen makes her living in business management. She will represent her adopted homeland in Pattaya. Sulkanen will face stiff competition for the women’s crown at the 37th staging of AMF’s annual autumn bowling classic. In addition to previously announced Diane Buchanan of Canada, Kirsten Penny of England and Ann Maree Putney of Australia, who all made it into the top eight last year, the field will contain Malaysian standout Shalin Zulkifli and Ross Greiner of the Netherlands.

Zulkifli entered last year’s quarterfinals as the top seed but fell to Penny in the best-two-of-three-games knockout format, so she looks to even the score in this, her fifth World Cup outing. Zulkifli, a 23-year-old sports psychology student, already owns a piece of AMF Bowling World Cup history; she was the first woman ever to roll a perfect game in the tournament (Cairo, Egypt, 1997). Her best finish to date came in 1996 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, when she placed second.

Greiner, an administrative assistant and mainstay on the Netherlands’ national team, is remembered for her dramatic but futile attempt to wrest the 1993 AMF Bowling World Cup from Great Britain’s Pauline Buck on the final ball of the 10th frame of the women’s championship match. Greiner left the 7-pin on a solid 1-3 pocket hit to lose by one pin. Her last World Cup appearance came in 1999 in Las Vegas, USA, where she finished seventh; she placed fifth in Kobe, Japan, in 1998.


Shalin Zulkifli, photo by Lydia Rypcinski

Other top women bowlers who have qualified for Pattaya include Sayuri Yamada of Mexico, who co-owns the FIQ-WTBA World Championships women’s trios’ record for single-game score (709, to which Yamada contributed a 279 game); Asa Wetterlund of Sweden, a national team member who finished 32nd last year in Lisbon, Portugal; and Kristal Scott, a collegiate champion from the United States.

The men’s field is headlined by 1999 AMF Bowling World Cup champion Ahmed Shaheen of Qatar. Shaheen became the first person in history to win international bowling’s top two individual titles, the Bowling World Cup and the FIQ-WTBA World Masters, in the same calendar year. Like Zulkifli, Shaheen has also rolled a 300 game in the Bowling World Cup; he is one of 10 men to have done so in the tournament’s first 36 years. Shaheen will be challenged by the likes of Malaysia’s Ben Heng, a newcomer to the AMF Bowling World Cup; Danny Falconi of Mexico, who will be trying to better his best-ever World-Cup finish of third place (1995, Sao Paulo, Brazil); long-time Dutch star Nico Thientpondt; Anders Ohman, who defeated defending men’s champion Tomas Leandersson in the Swedish national qualifier; Norwegian national team member Kim Haugen; and U.S. national amateur champion Scott Norton.