Bowler Dianne (Bobbie) Ingham is fired up for today's singles action at the Pan-Am Games following a fine performance in the weekend's doubles.

While Bermuda finished the two-day event in eighth position, Ingham, bowling with compatriot June Dill at the Sebelen Bowling Centre in Santo Domingo, finished eighth out of the 32 competitors in the individual standings.

Dill, who started brightly on Saturday, faded somewhat yesterday to finish 23rd.

Bermuda ended with a total of 2,170 pins, 204 away from the medals. Mexico (2,279) took the gold, the USA (2,422) silver and Columbia (2,374) bronze.

Ingham, who averaged 193, believes her performance will stand her in good stead for the individual rounds.

"I am feeling quite confident," she said. "If I do what I did today I should be in the running. My target is to be up in the top ten."

The Games veteran began slowly and then built up a rhythm which saw her come into her own down the final stretch.

"In the first set I was a bit loose and there were some bumps that had to be ironed out," she said. "The first day was shorter oil and we just had to adjust. But definitely today, once I got my rhythm going I did well.

"In the beginning I was nervous and I couldn't come off the ball the way that I wanted to and so that made it even more difficult. Today, I found it much easier and it showed."

Ingham said she had played out yesterday's six games in her head overnight.

"I was bowling without being on the lanes," she said. "Right now, it is a mental game for me, being repetitious is what I need to be."

Ingham said she had not looked at how she was doing personally, preferring to concentrate on the job at hand. "I was just bowling, I wasn't really looking at the score because we have been taught to just go out and bowl our game and find out the results later. But I felt comfortable and I was quite pleased with the end result," she said.

In stark contrast, Dill began the reflection on her own performance with a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh.

"The face says it all," she said. "I am terribly disappointed in the way I performed today.

"I feel so bad for Bobbie because she bowled so well and I just couldn't help her. Had I been able to at least step it up a bit we could have been right in there in the hunt.

"She was excellent, she was fantastic. Hey, but for her last game she was carrying a 200 effort."

Dill said nerves were not a problem, putting her performance down to following coach Maurice Pinell's instructions to the letter.

"I was doing what I was told to do and it wasn't working," she said. "But if that is what you are told to do you stick to it. I felt, within myself, that maybe I should have moved across the lane and maybe I should but then you don't like to go against the coach."

Dill's comments were not meant as a criticism of Pinell's instructions.

"He is great," she said. "I think, personally, he has raised my level, my standard. He has me doing things that I wouldn't have thought of doing before. I am seeing things happen with my ball that I could not do before."

As for today's singles, Dill said she "could only get better".

"I would like to improve on my score," she said. "I felt I was executing OK, I was a bit fast at times, but I think by the time I finished my first three games I was so disturbed because I threw three games the highest of which was 155 and he (coach Pinell) didn't move me. He kept telling me to stay there. If I was bowling on my own after the first couple of shots and I had seen the ball hanging out there I would have said `hey, I'm moving'.

"But you have to see that he knows, and he does, and so I just kept thinking `it's going to work, it's going to work'."

Men's Games bowling - See Page 24