Merrien marches into the quarters

GUERNSEY'S Alison Merrien stormed into the quarter-finals of the WBL World Champion of Champions singles event at the Warilla Bowling Club in New South Wales, where she was poised to take on Welsh champion Kathy Pearce today. Merrien's opening defeat against Holland's Guurtje Ros-Copier proved to be a mere hiccup, and she went on to win all her remaining group matches - except the seventh round against Scotland's British champion Kathy Houston.

At the completion of the group stage, the Guernsey star was well placed at the top of the table - significantly ahead of the two players who has beaten her in the round robin.

Ros-Copier and Houston finished second and third in the table, and the surprise in the section was the comparative failure of twice Malaysia's Commonwealth Games champion Sita Zalina Ahmad, who scraped into the last eight by the skin of her teeth.

Merrien's march into the knockout stage was emphatic. Losing two games on tiebreaks, she won her remaining six matches - against Sheila Stead (Spain), Ahmad, Marie van der Merwe (Namibia), Leanne Chinery (Canada), Rosita Bradborn (Philippines) and Espina McNair (Papua New Guinea) - all in straight sets.

Although there was still one round left to play in the men's event, Guernsey hope Gary Pitschou was reconciled to the fact that he was marginally out of the reckoning for a place in the quarter-finals.

After losing five matches - to South Africa's Wayne Perry, Canada's Mark Sandford, Kiwi Tony Grantham, England's Mark Walton and Spain's Keith Jones - Pitschou's last match, against second-in-table William James, offered him merely a chance to finish on a high note.

Whatever the outcome of that final outing, Pitschou can reflect with pride on his five wins - against Kenya's Patrick Hughes, PNG's Pomat Topal, Singapore's Boon Hong Lim, America's Jack Behling and Peter Pita from the Cook Islands.