Team USA Closes out Dominant WMC with 3 Masters Medals

In one of the more dominating performances ever at bowling's Men's World Championships, Team USA, led by DFW resident Chris Barnes, closed out the Masters competition on Saturday with a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal to finish the event with 11 total medals, 8 ahead of the next highest total for another country by Korea.  Team USA finished out with 5 Gold, 2 Silver and 4 Bronze.

Barnes won Masters Gold in a 3-game sweep over teammate Patrick Allen in the finals, after Allen defeated teammate Wes Malott in the semi-finals.  Malott shared Bronze with singles Silver medalist Bok-Eum Choi of Korea.  A 4th member of Team USA also made the Masters competition, which is comprised of the top 16 bowlers after 24 games of competition over the previous 4 events, but O'Neill failed to advance through round 1.

The previous day, Team USA won an exciting team event title match, with a 1073-1057 score over Finland, for the 3rd straight World Championships team Gold medal for the United States.  The U.S. dominated much of the match, but in the latter frames, Finland made a ferocious comeback led by PBA star Mika Koivuniemi and 2-handed phenom Osku Palermaa, but in the end, Tommy Jones finished out strong for the Americans to secure the victory for the "Dream Team".

The Americans also won Gold and Bronze medals in singles by Bill O'Neill and Chris Barnes, respectively, as well as a bronze in doubles by Patrick Allen and Rhino Page.  They also took home trios Gold and Bronze medals with the trio of Malott, Page, and Allen defeating Jones, Barnes and O'Neill in the semi-finals before going on to win Gold.

It goes to show that when the United States puts it best bowlers it has to offer on a team together, there is no other country that can really hang with them, even with all the amazing talent in all the other parts of the world.