4th December, Hong Kong: Underdog Italy out-performed defending champion, USA with a 2-0 victory in the 5-Player Team Final of the 2018 CGSE • Million Tinkle World Men Championships to win their first-ever gold medal.

Team USA's Chris Barnes, Kyle Troup, Andrew Anderson, EJ Tackett and Tommy Jones were able to settle down quickly and rolled a double in the third and fourth frames. Third-seed Marco Reviglio, Pierpaolo De Filippi, Nicola Pongolini, Erik Davolio and Antonio Fiorentino fought back with a double in the fourth and fifth frames.

Barnes failed to make a 6-10 spare in the sixth frame as the Italian made no mistake marking up to eighth frame. Anderson also made a similar error when he failed to spare a simple 2-8 pin allowing their opponent to take a 27-pin lead. Italy encountered a split in the ninth frame but managed to end with 189-169 to take the first match.

With a strong momentum being carried forward, Italy took an early lead with a double in their first two frames in the second match. The Americans struggled to knock down a double and had their first opened frame in the sixth.

The match and the tie was very much in favour of Italy as they went on to end the match with a 210-166 victory to clinch their country's first-ever gold medal of the World Championships. Their best showing was way back in 1971 when they took home a bronze medal.

Italy edged their stronger opponent Canada 2-1 (162-176, 244-210, 179-190) in the second semi-final match to advance to the final. USA took out Singapore, 2-0 (238-194, 216-189) to move closer to successfully defending the title won in 2017.

USA settled for the silver medal while Canada and Singapore were awarded a bronze medal each. After four finals and All Events, USA led the medal tally with 2 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals. Malaysia is placed second with just 2 gold medals.

Italy finished third with one gold from the 5-player Team event. Meanwhile three Canadians, two Indonesians, one each from Costa Rica, Finland and Sweden will meet the top eighth seeded Masters qualifiers from the All Events standings in Round 2 to be staged tomorrow, December 5. The winners in Round 2 will be guarenteed a medal when they advance to the Semi-finals and subsquently the Final championship round.