WE HAVE a world bowling champion. Yes, we do. That we know. But let's put this into perspective.

Jasmine Yeong-Nathan didn't just win the AMF World Cup. She blitzed the field.

Indeed, even a week after that final, I reckon runner-up Ann-Maree Putney is still feeling sore from the pounding she received.

Honestly, the Australian never had a ghost of a chance in that two-game final.

Just like Yeong-Nathan did to the rest of the field in the qualifying blocks, she inflicted serious psychological damage on the reigning World Cup champion in the step-ladder final.

Let's not wax lyrical over that perfect game she put together in the second block of qualifying.

You know and I know that it is notoriously difficult to achieve, even by the game's top professionals.

A 300-game in bowling the equivalent to a nine-darts finish, a maximum 147 break in snooker, a Golden Set in tennis.

But, like I said, let's not go on and on.

The perfect game came with the occasion.

Hot streak

Even Yeong-Nathan will admit as much. She was on a hot streak and she scorched the lanes.

But what baffled me, what made me scratch my head in wonderment, what made me go poring over the record books was that finish.

Here was a girl - okay, a woman of 20 - barely on the cusp of adulthood, bowling as if she were a barnacled-thumbed, crusty ol' professional.

She had made it that far. But she had one last battle to fight. What must have gone through her mind.

Like Rafael Nadal walking out onto centre-court where Roger Federer beckoned. Like a young Cassius Clay peeping out of the dressing room and seeing Sonny 'The Bear' Liston already in the ring.

To a much lesser extent, same too with our bowler. Like them, she knew what had to be done, so she went in and did it.

Experts will tell you that having a clear conception of a situation and being able to pull it off under pressure suggests a physical and mental harmony rarely reached in sport.

Do you know how difficult it is to win a two-game, winner-take-all, step-ladder final? There was no carrying-forward of scores. Both she and Putney would start from scratch.

It takes nerves which, by then, are jangled. Caution is the keyword. You see bowlers 'playing safe'. You don't get too many strikes.

Do you know how difficult and rare it is for a finalist to do what Yeong-Nathan did - shoot a 298 in the final game?

I thumbed through the record books, looking up the World Cup's more illustrious winners. This is what I discovered.

In 2006, American Diandra Asbaty beat England's Lisa John 232-214 and 226-199.

Then there was Australian Jeanette Baker? When she won the event in 1983, she rolled a 233 game to Germany's Gisela Lins' 194. That was considered a 'huge victory'.

In 1992 Martina Beckel won with a score of 221 to 179. The following year, a very nervous Pauline Smith's 178 in the final won her the title by one pin.

Four years later, Taiwanese 'helicopter' bowler Tseng Su-fen received a standing ovation when she rolled a winning 236 in the final.

So you see, low-200s were the order of the day. It wasn't that they weren't good. They were the best at the time. But they just couldn't bring it off under pressure.

Yeong-Nathan could.

I watched the video of the final. The movement was so fluid, so precise.

Such was the harmony that she looked like she had been born of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Once she found her line, the rest was pure tracer fire. What was missing was the ecstasy and the rapture. But Yeong-Nathan didn't need those trimmings. She was herself.

When she sat down during deliveries, she looked like she was having a latte along Clarke Quay. So relaxed was she in that pulsating arena.

I spoke to her father, RV Nathan, who I had known for decades, ever since we were neighbours in those humble 'government quarters' along Towner Road.

He told me what a 'good girl' she was. How, from young, she never asked for anything.

Now 20, she hasn't changed. There is a certain sweetness when she talks of her family - her dad, mum Veronica and brother Jason. In Yeong-Nathan there is that clear pride in her middle-class upbringing.

She was no country club kid. She honed her bowling skills at the Singapore Recreation Club from where she rose to become a winner.

Have you looked closely at the photos of her that have been splashed in the newspapers recently? She is so self-effacing that it hides her genius.

While other world beaters would profess to be 20 flavours rolled into one, Yeong-Nathan is pure vanilla.

Sweet, charming, good-looking, gentle and, as her quotes suggest, generous in her praise for others.

But soft, she isn't. When the situation in Mexico last Friday called for nerves of steel and a mind so strong, Yeong-Nathan morphed.

As the bowling world watched in awe, the quiet, reserved, sweet girl from Singapore turned a 15-pound bowling ball into a wrecking ball.

And across 31 countries today, they are still picking up the pieces from the pounding they received.