4th October, Hong Kong: Experience prevailed for seasoned tour winners as TOC champion, Tang Joh Six of Malaysia and four-time tour winner, Shaker Al-Hassan of UAE triumped in the ABF Tour Hong Kong leg just concluded at Hong Kong Bowling City on Sunday.

ABF Tour Tournament of Champion winner, Tang Joh Six immediately set the tone in the women's title match after the Malaysian rolled five consecutive strikes from frame four onwards forcing her challenger and Macau leg champion, Putty Armein to miss two frames as a result.

Tang went on to cruise to a convincing and comfortable victory over Armein, 232-189 to win her first tour title this year. The champion had won the Thailand Open and finished as first runnerup in the ABF Tour Thailand leg in April.

The champion eliminated two Thais in the first two rounds before ousting another Indonesian and second runnerup of the preceeding Hong Kong International Open, Sharon Limansantoso, 191-170 in the second semi-final match to advance into the finals.

Armein reached the finals after edging the sole surviving Hong Kong women, Rebecca Chau, 175-170 in the first semi. The runnerup had earlier ousted Korea's Park Jin Hee, 232-205 and Hong Kong's Cookie Lee, 236-204 in the first two rounds.

Meanwhile, 2008 ABF Tour Saudi leg champion, Shaker Al-Hassan of UAE clinched his first tour title this year after he edged local favourite, Wu Siu Hong, 184-178 in the Men's finals. Shaker had only managed to qualify for three legs finals this year and was knocked out in the opening rounds.

The climate of this leg was undoubtedly during the first semi-final match between Shaker and Hong Kong's Wicky Yeung. The duo went into the ninth and tenth frame tie-breaker after both tied at 212.

Yeung could have clinched the match had he picked up the single-pin spare in his final throw but missed it to end at 212. Shaker struck in the tenth and another strike could have sealed the match he too managed only nine pins and sparing it for the tie.

Both bowlers opened the ninth frame and when Shaker only spared the tenth frame and struck in his last throw for 29 pins, Yeung's strike in the tenth meant all he needed was either another strike to take to match of a spare to force another tie breaker.

But to the disappointment for the local supporters, Yeung had a split and failed to pick up the spare thereby handing the match to the Emirati. The champion had earlier ousted topseed, Yannaphon Larpapharat of Thailand, 213-201 and Hong Kong's Joshua Chow, 209-201 in the first two rounds.

Wu knocked out team-mate Eric Tseng 208-186 in the other all-Hong Kong semi-final match to advance into the finals. The runnerup also posted the tournament's highest game when he beat current tour ranking leader, Hussain Al-Suwaidi of UAE, 267-209 in Round 1.

The seventh and final leg of this year's tour - the ABF Tour Indonesia leg will be held in Jakarta on October 18 which will be the last chance for Asian bowlers to make the grand finals by earning more ranking points which is scheduled for January 2010.

For further information and details, please contact ABF Tour Committee at Tel: +852 2893 6039, Fax: +852 2893 6290; Email: info@abftour.com.

Photos by Terence Yaw in Hong Kong.