JEDDAH: Xtreme-Taurus, Al Murjana, Habagat and Bank AlJazira Fawri survived the knockout round to qualify for the stepladder phase in the OSN-FTBJ 50th Open Conference bowling tournament at the Bowling City here.

The four teams joined outright qualifiers Sky Freight-OSN, BCT-Lutong Pinoy and Alfa Moe Yasser to complete the seven-team stepladder cast vying for the major prizes in this Saturday night five-man team league event.

The three games with handicap knockout had Taurus returning the highest point total on 43 points to qualify as the No. 4 team, with Murjana making it as No. 5 on 42, Habagat No. 6 on 40.5 and AlJazira No. 7 on 34.5.

In the first match of the stepladder, the qualifiers at Nos. 4, 5, 6 and 7 play two games with handicap and the winner to advance to the second match against No. 3 Alfa Moe Yasser. The No. 2 team BCT-Lutong Pinoy then takes on the second match winner to determine the challenger of No. 1 Sky Freight-OSN in the championship match where Sky Freight enjoys a twice-to-beat edge.

Taurus finished strong to gain the chance to compete for the next round thanks mainly to a big game from Jimmy Urbano who rolled 712. Joel Nidoy was chief in backing Urbano on 623 while Edwin Ronquillo added 578, Ric Nangel 244-172, Alex Flora 200-178 and Raul delos Reyes 181-184.

The trio of Joey Calapatia, Rolly Vistal and Nap Patayan was the reason why Murjana was still standing. Calapatia shot 639, Vistal had 612 and Patayan made 599. Santos fired 595 while the remaining three games were shared by Rey Beltran 184-188 and Elo Manalo 175.

For Habagat the duo of Rommel Cagampang and Richard Antonio led the way on 620 and 613 with Manny Tibay and Med Ramos also going the distance on 601 and 567. George Mangaliman contributed 160-216 while Edu Toledo had 199.

Making the last bus to the stepladder round during the 20th week of the tournament, AlJazira drew 600, 593 and 563 from Bing Amolo, Atoi Cruz and Luis Luna. The other scorers were Randy Mata 198-189, Jowet CArion 164-194 and Lorenz Santos 156-183.

Following is the order of finish for the rest of the teams that were eliminated: 9. Masaken, 8. MC Hammer, 10. D’ Barkads, 11. Red Dragons and 12. GBI-TBBGI.