Ten-pin bowling Bowling Championships. Ten-pin bowling has an international ranking system, as with many professional individual sports. This ten-pin equivalent is known as the World Ranking Masters and is made of three vast tours: the European, Americas and Asian bowling tours. Other minor tournaments, although major in their respective countries, include Britain's prestigious BTBA Nationals (BTBA National Championships), the Brunswick Ballmaster Open, Brunswick Euro Challenge in Greece, ETBF European Youth Championships, the European Gold Cup and the Mediterranean Challenge Cup. The world's premier amateur event is the WB/WTBA World Championships (World Bowling) which has been running since 1954 and is now held
Five-pin bowling Five-pin bowling Five-pin bowling is a bowling variant which is played in Canada, where many bowling alleys offer it, either alone or in combination with ten-pin bowling. It was devised around 1909 by Thomas F. Ryan in Toronto, Ontario, at his "Toronto Bowling Club", in response to customers who complained that the ten-pin game was too strenuous. He cut five tenpins down to about 75% of their size, and used hand-sized hard rubber balls, thus inventing the original version of five-pin bowling. The balls in five pin bowling are small enough to fit in the hand and therefore typically have