Locals defend home front in Aviva Tour

The Aviva Asian Bowling Tour, the most prestigious bowling circuit in Asia, fires off at the Pearl Bowling Center in Baclaran beginning tomorrow with Purvis Granger, Paolo Valdez, Chester King, Biboy Rivera leading the country’s bid in the top-level event featuring the best and the brightest players in the region.

Granger, the 2002 Grand Slam Finals champion, won the Philippine leg last year but the former Hong Kong national team coach, the first Filipino bowler to win on home ground, will have his hands full this time against the likes of Wu Siu Hong, the 18-year-old Hong Kong sensation who bowled 1,022 in four games during the Open Singles event of the just-concluded Boysen-PBC International Open Tenpin Bowling Championships.

The other men to watch are Malaysians Alex Liew, Daniel Lim and Zulmazran Zulkifli, rising Indonesian star Ryan Lalisang and the troika of King, Valdez and Rivera.

The top 14 bowlers from the Masters finals of the Boysen-PBC tilt are seeing action in the two-day event, the third leg of the tour calendar which will also have stops in Singapore, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong and back in Singapore for the Grand Slam Finals in Jan. 2004.

Defending champion Wang Yu Ling of Chinese Taipei heads the cast in the distaff side of the event which will be shown "live" on ESPN at 4 p.m., June 14-15 (Hong Kong/ Singapore time).

Women bowlers from Taiwan have won three out of the last four Philippine leg crowns although Cecilia Yap, Irene Benitez and Liza del Rosario have vowed to crowd the foreign bets in a bid to become the first Filipina bowler to win here.

The other fancied bets are the mighty Malaysians, featuring Sarah Yap and Lai Kin Ngoh, as well as former World Ranking Masters champions Jesmine Ho and Jennifer Tan of Singapore.

The Tour is one of the major Asian ranking tournaments. Its status was further established in 2002 when the World Tenpin Masters started granting wildcards to the men’s and women’s champions of the Grand Slam Finals to compete in the Masters.