The 2009 debut of the PBA Tour on ESPN welcomed us bowling fans back to our favorite sport and TV pastime with a number of things to be thankful for. Yep, bowling was back on TV, but that pales in comparison with the fact that we got five legit Player of the Year candidates on a single show, four matches of 100% pure PBA Tour action, an epic wide shot of Rob Stone introducing the show from what looked like 100 feet above the lanes and, perhaps best of all, no clips of Bill Murray doing his “floor helicopter” celebration from the movie Kingpin (which has seemed a requirement on any telecast from the National Bowling Stadium).
Randy did a solid job of explaining that the TV pair would provide an unprecedented new twist for the finalists in that the right lane was conditioned using the PBA’s Cheetah oil pattern and the left lane with the Shark. For those of you not completely hip to the lane maintenance lingo, that’s kind of like golfers having to alternate putting on Augusta National’s greens on a Sunday after three straight dry, windy days and then going to a Seattle-area pitch and putt during the height of the rainy season (which is pretty much any time of the year you want) for the next.
In the opening match, red-hot Bill O’Neill, who made three consecutive shows earlier in the season, went up against white-hot Patrick Allen who was making a double-triple (three consecutive shows and three consecutive shows in the NBS…he made it in ’07 – where he won, ’08 and again this year). The night/day pattern contrast was obvious as both players used shiny stuff on the right lane for the Cheetah and dull stuff on the left lane for the Shark (PA even used two different manufacturers’ equipment and wore the patches of both…wonder how those incentives will be paid?). The match was pretty tight all the way through but PA’s experience seemed to be the difference as he pulled out a late string of strikes to clinch a 218-200 win.
In stepped Chris Barnes, activating a whole lot of booth discussion of how bad he’s been bowling this season (I’m sure all of the other Tour players lower than Barnes’ sixth on the point list just loved to hear that). Barnes played the lanes very similarly to one another by using two different pieces of equipment and very little axis tilt (he was throwing it almost perfectly end-over-end). After an errant shot in the 2nd frame that made me question the strategy of playing so far right on the Shark pattern, Barnes got comfortable and began a string of six straight strikes (as I silently ate crow in my own mind yet again). Unfortunately for Chris (which is a very common way of starting a sentence when it comes to Barnes bowling on TV), PA started off the match with his own five-bagger, two nine-spares and then two more strikes.
But Chris had an edge in count and stepped up in the 9th with a chance to throw four strikes to close out the match. A ridiculous stone-7 on a high-flush hit made the crowd wince like they were all simultaneously hit in the shin with ball peen hammers. Then Barnes completely took the air out of the building by flagging the spare and then looked like he wanted to go back into the locker room and smash his own bowling hand between two cinder blocks. He somehow managed a turkey in the 10th for 236, forcing PA to show up, but lost when Allen went off the sheet for 267. But Barnes did mention he still had a shot at defending his POY title, which of course he does since the majors are worth a ridiculous number of POY points, there are still three of them left, and because he usually bowls well in them.
Match three gave us a glimpse of the guy who would be the most dominant player on Tour if he could just win on TV (I’ll bet CB is happy to hear that sentence not in reference to him for once), Wes Malott. Unfortunately for Wes (anyone experiencing déjà vu yet?), PA was now dead locked-in and looked like he was a legitimate threat for the fourth 300 game in National Bowling Stadium TV lore. The most interesting thing about this blowout of a match (PA won 268-215) was the interview clip where Wes said he didn’t like the idea of the TV pair using two different oil patterns. Guess what? He bowled like it. He seemed annoyed and distracted from the get-go and you always have to wonder sometimes if players are capable of losing matches before they even start. I would venture to guess that the explanation (that Malott chose not to elaborate upon during the interview) for why he doesn’t like the two-pattern TV pair format is because if one guy gets off to a good start and figures out the lanes, his advantage is likely to be magnified over the course of the telecast…exactly like PA was doing here.
PA’s reward for marching through the field like the Allies through Germany was to face arguably the greatest bowler in PBA history. I know that Walter Ray is very diplomatic and humble when answering the question of if he or Earl Anthony should be recognized as the greatest bowler in PBA history, but I feel that WRW’s argument (which he explained in an interview during the title match) for why Earl deserves it is flawed. Here’s why. Walter Ray says that Earl’s success is statistically better because he achieved his wins in fewer tournaments than the former. But people often forget that Earl was a flop when he tried the Tour in his twenties and that he went home to practice before returning in his thirties to be the (incredibly!) dominant player we remember during the 14-year span from 1970 to 1983. But Walter Ray has had a similarly dominant stretch from 1993 to the present (at least one title in the last 16 consecutive seasons and 38 overall in that time) and he’s still going. Plus he played second arrow during match play (which David Ozio said was the equivalent of dropping a champagne glass from the top of an extension ladder onto cement without breaking it) in the 1992 US Open and led by more than 600 pins which is the single greatest bowling feat I’ve ever personally witnessed in my life.
Despite that, I had to rate Walter Ray a huge underdog going into the final, given PA’s glorious ball reaction, the level of his execution in the three prior matches and his past success at the Stadium (although WRW is not exactly a slouch there either). Walter Ray played the lanes similar to Barnes, except using even less rotation, but looked to be in a bit of trouble on the right lane after a strike, 4-pin, 2-4 start in his first three attempts. But PA ran into a few carry problems (common after a two-game blitz, especially with the TV lights evaporating the oil like it was rubbing alcohol) and then made a grabby shot in the 9th to make it a dead heat. Walter Ray made two magnificently perfect shots in the 8th and 9th (the one in the 9th was especially pure given his 1-for-4 start and iffy ball reaction on that lane) to give himself a chance in the 10th. After PA went nine-spare, strike in the 10th, Deadeye needed two strikes in the 10th to take home title number 46. He Stefani’d the first one and then made what looked like a decent shot for the wheat, only to leave…a pocket 8-10. Game over. Realizing he’d won, PA walked off the set and may have even been over at the Reno Hilton when the cameras caught up with him. Walter Ray looked like he was ready to go throttle the mechanic because I caught a piece of him saying that the rack was off spot. It was an incredibly dramatic ending that easily rivaled anything on the tube this Sunday.
Ironically, Walter Ray may have been the victim of his own philosophy of never taking a rerack. I’m not sure if he took one or not prior to his shot in the 11th (or if he’d already used his allotted amount earlier in the match), but I seem to remember a Walter Ray quote from a few years back where he said that he doesn’t believe in reracks because he never takes them in practice and that is when most of us throw our biggest strings of strikes. Bad rack or not, there is always a risk/reward component to playing the lanes straight-up. Sometimes, you sacrifice carry and hitting power for accuracy, and when there is a bad rack, the flatter angle of entry is even more exposed to this risk. But that aside, leaving the 8 with the 10, because it cost him the count that would have at least given him a tie and some extended play, was an awfully bad break at an awfully bad time. In any event, congrats to PA on title number 11!
Here are a few other things I picked up on this week:
- Randy mentioned the names of the equipment the players were using. I’ve personally received a great number of emails requesting this so I’m sure this was a welcome change for all of you.
- My wife asked me why Lynda Barnes didn’t leave her front-row seat to go and comfort her husband after he lost. I told her that it would have been like trying to give a shark a fluoride treatment right after he smelled blood.
- The show was ten minutes too long again despite bowling through the commercial breaks during the first two matches. I wonder if it would be possible to expand the show to two hours?
- I was waiting for one of the players to bob their head like Chris Kattan in Night at the Roxbury every time the techno music was pumped in between frames.
- Is it just me or is there a shot of Chris Barnes sitting on the bench looking dejected/depressed/distressed in just about every old highlight clip?
- How about a big “Nice bowling!” to Liz Johnson this week! She’s already the first woman to make a show on the “men’s” Tour, but how about almost making one in the long format too?
That’s all for this week folks. I also wanted to let you know that I won’t be doing the recap next week (have to work my real job…bummer) so please enjoy the show and be sure to check out the Rolex trophy that some lucky guy (or gal) will be picking up in Medford. See you in two weeks for the T of C!
What did you think? Please e-mail me with your thoughts on this week’s show at
jason@jasonthomasbowling.com and be sure to check out the January issue of Bowlers Journal to read my contribution to that excellent publication’s annual 2008 Pats and Pans feature. Also check out
my other weekly blog as well as the latest episode of
The Bowling Show that features a compelling interview with newly exempt PBA veteran Dave Arnold.
