After losing in three WBT finals, it was fourth time lucky for Auchinleck's Stewart Anderson when he won the Fred.Olsen Cruise Lines World Indoor Singles title decider against Ayrshire compatriot Paul Foster in one of the closest ever witnessed.
In the opening set, both won five ends apiece. The scoreline stood at 4-4 after six but a double gave Foster the edge at 6-4. However, Anderston countered with four inch-perfect deliveries to take an 8-6 advantage and he increased that to 10-6 with two ends remaining.
In a high drama chase, Foster, with four singles titles under his belt, replied with a treble and held a set lie only for Anderson to draw the second shot to share the set at 10-10.
In the second set, Anderson continued to demonstrate his awesome precision and forged into a 6-1 four-end lead but a wonder take-out by Foster brought the audience to their feet as he claimed a full house to reduce the advantage.
Once again Anderson did all the hard work and opened up a 9-5 cushion and once again Foster showed his hunger for a record-equalling fifth singles crown with a 1, 2 and 1 to level at 9-9 and set the stage for a one-end spectacle where the winner of the last end would be crowned champion.
Foster cast the jack and ran just fractionally past with his first bowl but Anderson calmly rolled only inches from the jack to put the pressure on Foster. As the end played out, Foster delivered his last bowl which also finished inches from the jack but refused to fall over leaving Anderson's opening bowl as the match-winner to give him first world singles title.
Anderson said: "I took up bowling in 1998, when I was 13, the same year Paul won his first world title in Preston. To win this title 14 years later is a dream."
Foster said "Stewart played the better bowls and I was always chasing. His first two bowls were always on target and he was more consistent than me over the piece."
The previous day, in the first all-Scottish semi-final since 2001, Anderson met Bowls Scotland head coach and world No.4 David Gourlay and although he won 5-5, 9-4 the match was marred by spec-tators arriving late for the start which was continually interrupted.
Foster got over the line in a tie-break in his semi-final against qualifier Midlothian's Colin Walker 7-5, 4-8, 2-0.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article