BARNES FINISHES FOURTH
IN SINGLES AT WORLD GAMES

KAOHSIUNG, Chinese Taipei - Team USA's Chris Barnes finished fourth in singles recently at the World Games, narrowly missing an opportunity to bring home a medal.

A costly 4-7-10 split in the final frame of the last game kept Barnes on the outside of the top-three stepladder finals by 13 pins. He finished the 10-game round-robin match play with 2,221, including 60 bonus pins for a 6-4 match-play record.

Colombia's Manuel Otalora went on to win the men's title by defeating top seed Wu Siu Hong of Hong Kong, 445-367, in the two-game championship. Otalora advanced from the semifinal with a 184-181 one-game win over Malaysia's Adrian Ang, who defeated Barnes 245-187 in the final game of match play.

"I'm really disappointed because there are so many of the guys on Team USA who could have come here and won this event," Barnes said. "I was really honored to be selected to compete here and to not finish the deal makes me feel like I've let my team down."

Heading into the position round game against Ang, there was a brief break to tabulate scores. Barnes said during that break he lost some of the momentum from the 257 he had in Game 9.

"During that little break I sort of lost my feel for what I was doing," Barnes said. "I threw it a lot better after the sixth frame to get back into the hunt, but it just wasn't enough. The last shot where I split, the ball was just about one board left of target and needed some help. It just wasn't my best effort."

On the women's side, Finland's Krista Pollanen, the No. 3 seed, defeated top seed Zara Glover of England, 407-378, to win the gold medal Liza Del Rosario of the Philippines lost to Pollanen in the semifinal, 215-210, and earned the bronze.

Bowling is one of more than 30 sports not currently included in the Olympics that are being showcased in the World Games until July 26. Bowling, along with archery, billiards and bocce, is classified as a precision sport.

For more information on the World Games, visit the official Web site of the event at www.worldgames2009.tw.