During her first seven games of singles qualifying, Poland's Daria Pająk never scored above 208, but that was enough for second place in Group A, Pool 1 at the 2026 IBF World Cup in Munich.
Together with four other players, she has 15 points, and her 1,390 pins are the most in the pool.
Her lowest game was 179. Keeping her scores that steady took constant work, she told BowlingLife.
“I started off playing close to the gutter with my concept but that went away the moment fronts started to hook. I couldn't create angle throwing it to the gutter as the ball wouldn't come back for me,” she said.
That forced a much bigger move.
“So when the ball started to hook too early or I wasn't able to throw it fast enough to keep it in line - in front of me, I needed to make a jump - jump from 1st arrow to 4th. Once I was inside the adjustments were mostly related to my ball speed.”
Earlier in the week, after the first men's singles pools, some players said the lanes were hard to read because everyone played them differently. Pająk, who also watched the men bowl, said the differences between the men's pairs were more drastic.
“As for my squad, I felt like you really needed to be on top of your moves: make quick decisions, confident ball changes and trust your gut.”
Ball speed was a big part of the puzzle.
“Some pairs allowed for higher ball speed as the ball was going through the pins well whilst other required to slow it down to allow the ball to do work on the lanes that got tighter due to urethane balls,” she explained.
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The top four from each pool reach the singles Top 32 on Sunday, October 18. Australia's Samantha Clifton currently leads Pająk's pool with 18 points. In the other groups, Karen Kærgaard Nielsen, Shannon Pluhowsky, Sin Li Jane and Shayna Ng were the four women still unbeaten after the opening day.
