KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 27 — Tactical performance by Muhammad Soufi Rusli in the men’s singles event today produced Malaysia’s sixth gold medal in the lawn bowls thus meeting the target of four gold medals for lawn bowls.

The country’s lawn bowls squad defeated Singapore 21-6 at the National Lawn Bowls Centre, Bukit Kiara here today.

The 30-year-old Kuala Lumpur-born athlete began with a one-point lead after the first end before leaving rival Lee Yuan Min far behind in the final end.

Muhammad Soufi maintained his good performance up to end 18 with no opportunity for his opponent to beat him although Yuan Min began to collect points up to the 8th end with the final score 11-2 in favour of the Malaysian.

The opponent’s improvement towards the end did not trouble Muhammad Soufi who collected points on 13 occasions compared to Yuan Min who collected points only on three occasions.

Muhammad Soufi , a police personnel, broke the record achieved by his coach, Syed Mohamad Syed Akil at the 2001 SEA Games.

For the record, Muhammad Soufi had won the bronze medal at the World Singles Champion of Champions in Australia (2016) and the silver medal at the World Singles Indoor in Sidney (2017).

Meanwhile, Syed Mohamad Akil, 54, who is a police sergeant-major, said he was proud and expressed confidence that all the 20 lawn bowls athletes participating in the 2017 Kuala Lumpur SEA Games (KL2017) would continue to succeed in subsequent competitions up to the world stage. — Bernama