Benitez, Granger pace PBC bowling

Veteran bowler Irene Benitez of SLETBA and American coach Purvis Granger came up with big scores Tuesday to take the spotlight in the Boysen-PBC Open 2001 championships at the Green Valley lanes in Pasig City.

Benitez, a long-time national bowler who has performed creditably in various international tournaments, rolled a two-game series of 846 pins to pace Liza del Rosario (831) and Joylyn Yambao (826) in the open singles event of the kegfest sponsored by Boysen and Philippine Sports Commission and supported by Goldilocks, Filkor, Prima Pasta, Bowlmart and Storm products.

Granger, the RP team’s foreign coach, collected 1776 pins to wrest the open men’s all-events’ lead from Benny Dytoc (1729).

Arianne Cerdena and Jojo Canare of the RP team also shared the limelight by scoring 856 to break the doubles mark of 851 set by Liza Cluratio and Liza del Rosario.

Clutario Nichol Yap, TBAM-Prima’s Eric Arkoncel and Bimbo Mesina and CAS’ Ching Co, Ampelle Alvarez and Sandra Enriquez emerged as the other new frontrunners in the two-week tourney which also serves as a qualifying round for the Philippine leg of the Asian Bowling Tour sponsored by ESPN.

Yap tallied 807 to move ahead of Tony Sainz (787) in class B singles and then collected 1575 to wrest the class B all-events top spot also from Sainz (1548).

Co, Alvarez and Enriquez, combined for 1030 to pull away from BAM (1002) and Magallanes (972) in class B ladies’ team, while Arkoncel and Mesina recorded 834 to surpass the 820 of Sammy Sy and Nilo Penado in class A doubles.