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NOW IT'S HELEN AT THE TOP
It all happened on the high-scoring lanes of the Lovvang Bowl in Aalborg yesterday.
We started out the morning with Lars Nielsen of Aalborg in pole position, having held that place at the top of the leader board for some four days.
Then, along came the slim figure of Linda Haglund from Sweden to sweep the floor with the competition by bowling a perfect game and take over the lead with a remarkable 1,453 including, of course, the eight pins per game bonus granted to the female bowlers.
That score held for just one squad. Someone turned a switch somewhere which has ignited superb pin action and the pins really were a'tumbling here by evening.
The target was upped to 1,507 as yet another young lady, and yes, another Swede in the svelte form of Helen Johnsson, slipped into top gear and stole Haglund's thunder by a whacking margin of 54 pins and we then had the unique situation of two ladies topping the field.
Johnsson, 27, an economics secretary from Lund in Sweden, (left) was cool, calm and collected throughout her series. Unlike many of the other top bowlers, she finished with two high games where others had slipped at the final hurdles. "I had no definite game plan," she told us afterwards. "These are good lanes and I had to make very few small changes as we went from lane to lane. I used the same ball all the way through the series. I kept an open mind and only thought of Haglund's score as I went into the last game."
Johnsson is used to the pressure and has 'been there and got the t-shirt'. She finished ninth in the Super Series in Kungsbacka at the turn of the year, having bowled a perfect game along the way.

PETRI IS THE MAN
A much higher than anticipated figure for the six-game cut, 1,351 as against the 1,320 to 1,330 predicted by the 'gurus', saw bowlers from just seven of the 19 countries originally in competition remaining in contention. That 42nd place was won by Sweden's Jouni Kemppainen.
The hard luck story is for Swedish national team player Patrick Backe, missing the cut by two pins. His father, Christer, has the unique distinction of having missed the cut of the Malta Open by a single pin, then repeating that unfortunate occurrence later in the Senior Malta Open.
The best bowling on the final squad came from Finland's Petri Mannonen, 33, (right) who came to the fore after finishing with a 279. The Tampere IT engineer for Nokia moves into fifth place overall with his 1,374.
"I was comfortable on the lanes today," he said. "I hit well on lanes 1 and 2 and was pleased with the 279. There was quite a lot of difference lane to lane today, and they dried out more than before, so I had to move inside later in the series."
Mannonen was third in the recent Super Series Championships in Jonkoping, Sweden. "I was very pleased to beat both Tore Torgersen and Chris Barnes in those finals," he commented. He was too modest to admit that he topped the Super Series rankings for last season.

A P(R)ETTY GOOD FEAT
We're heading into the home straight now, just one more squad to roll and sixty players desperately endeavoring to make that vital cut into the top 42 for the next stage. All hope they will not have to enter the infamous Desperado squad, the one-game on one lane, do or die, that gives us the final six places to make the ongoing event feature just 48 stars.
Saturday's penultimate squad was far from short of good bowling action. A three-way tussle between Tanya Petty of Germany (pictured), Par Svensson of Sweden and Norway's Sverre Lund saw the lead chop and change several times, the pendulum swinging to the advantage of Petty after her final game of 203 to give her just the edge.
Petty, 26 and eleven and a half months, a member of the German National Team, although she has lived and worked as a secretary in Vienna, Austria for the past three years, had to make this her fourth entry in this year's Brunswick Aalborg International and her total of 1,375 slides her into 19th place in the overall standings, so no need to hit the lanes again until the final rounds.
"These lanes are not easy, you have to be very precise with your shots," she said after this session. "Luckily, I was very focused today and was bowling well outside to the left, around the third board."
She is hoping to improve on recent results of second place in Istanbul, Turkey and sixth in Naples, Italy.

TORGERSEN ON A FLIER
Tore Torgersen, 35, from Norway (left) and Sweden's Tobias Karlsson had a ring-a-ding battle over the first four games for the supremacy of Saturday morning's squad 11 and maybe a chance to get into the top echelon of the qualifying standings.
Then Peder Jacobsson, also from Sweden, put his foot on the throttle and zoomed to the top of the standings. Come game six and he had a 17 pin buffer over the lithe Norwegian PBA professional bowler. Then it was strike to strike between the talented pair, bowling on adjacent lanes, each keeping a beady eye on the other's performance. Both had a spare in the midst of a string of strikes and it all came down to the tenth frame finish.
Torgersen went out first, striking all the way for a 279. After an 8-spare, the maximum for Jacobsson could only be 278 but, with his slight advantage, he could take the squad honors. Unfortunately, a stubborn 10-pin cost him his chances and he finished behind the Norwegian with a 252, so Torgersen emerged the victor, but was not able to knock leading qualifier the chirpy Helen Johnsson off her perch, he slotted into second place overall on 1,491, 16 pins off the lead.
This was Torgersen's sixth entry and his most satisfying. "I bowled about the same as the last three squads but didn't seem to bowl any better, I just changed my equipment," he explained. "I finally found a bowling ball that carried the pins. The final place I finished doesn't really matter, but I don't really want to end up in the top eight qualifiers. I've done that three times and then lost, so ninth to16th will be good for me.
"In today's squad I just bowled and didn't think too much about the opposition. I knew that I had to bowl a 300 in the last game and really tried for that, but I left an 8-pin in the fourth frame, so that put paid to that, but it doesn't really matter. I'm just happy to have found some form when I needed it the most."

A CHALLENGE FROM THE NORSE
Things turned into something of a Scandinavian civil war as Norway came into the equation with Svein Roger Olson, 23, of Oslo hitting the high score in the Friday 18:00 squad. The tall trainee chef had a meager 1,232  in his first entry, but topped this squad with 1,419. His best previous finish was third place in the Norwegian Open Super Series in Moss last October. "I'm in new territory here, I've never played as well as this before," he commented. "You really have to be precise with your shots on these lanes in Aalborg. If you miss your mark outside, the ball skids away, and if you miss inside, the ball hooks too much."
Olson was just 12 pins ahead of Norwegian team-mate Petter Hansen with his squad score. They both belong to the Solli Club. In the overall standings, Olson was in fifth place and Hansen eighth.

LINDA STOLE THE GLORY .... FOR A WHILE
Just as we had written that local lad Lars Nielsen was maintaining his enviable position at the top of the leader board, along came Sweden's Linda Haglund, 29, (left) to steal his thunder and set a new high of 1,453 for pole position. And not only, but also ...... Linda's fourth game couldn't have been any better, it was perfect in fact, twelve solid strikes to hit the 2004 Brunswick Aalborg International's first 300 game. Perhaps the pressure of that was a little too much as she dropped back to a 213 and 183 for the final two games, but her total pinfall, including the eight pins per game bonus, of 1,453 puts previous leader Nielsen down into second place.
Haglund wasn't too sure why she bowled so well today, compared with the scores she had previously posted. "I used the same ball and bowled the same line," she said afterwards. "But I did seem to have the carry with me today. Maybe I bowled a little slower, too. I certainly was far more relaxed than I have been over the past couple of days." The folks back home in Kungsbacka are going to be mighty pleased. In the meantime .... "I'm going to stay and watch Tore (Torgersen) for a while and then relax until tomorrow. We'll have a celebration BBQ party tonight. Around 20 of us have rented a couple of houses for the week, so it could be a bit noisy tonight."

NIELSEN NOW IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWEDE
Lars Nielsen, 36, (right) who lives quite close to the elegant Lovvang Bowling Center in Aalborg, helped to put his home town on the map by setting the early pace for the 2004 Brunswick Aalborg Open by posting the amazing score of 1,433 in the very first squad of this prestigious event.
 Fellow Dane, Henrik Klujeff , was also a competitor on that squad, and both scores withstood not only the test of time but the challenges of some of the world's top players, including pro bowlers from the United States, that is until talented Linda Hultgren hit the lanes.
Nielsen has 25 years bowling experience behind him and was, for some six years, a member of the reputable Danish national team and had the fortune to experience the 1995 World Championships at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno, USA.
Asked if he was surprised that he could post such a high score on the opening squad, he replied, "Yes, but not only was I surprised and pleased to hit such a good score, I am also surprised that it has stood so long at the top of the leader board."
Married, with three girls, Nielsen does not compete on the European Ranking Tour, but does like to enter the Aalborg International each year. He bowls regularly for the local Bates Club.

FINAL QUALIFYING STANDINGS:
Top 42 advance to next stage. Six will qualify from Desperado squad.