It’s always nice to see nice people do well, and this Sunday’s Shark Championship telecast, the last of the taped World Series of Bowling shows, did exactly that.
The big hero this week was the unassuming journeyman Jack Jurek, whose last (and only) win on Tour came in 1995 and has since kind of bounced around on and off the Tour his entire career after coming out of college in the mid 1980’s as one of the most highly touted players in history.
The now 46-year-old Jurek put it in a huge amount of training (mostly in the gym, where he dropped 10 pounds and 5% body fat) prior to the World Series, and it paid big dividends down the stretch as Jurek kept going strong as his fellow (often younger) competitors wilted down the stretch out of sheer exhaustion.
Three competitors who did not wilt were Jurek’s fellow finalists Wes Malott, Michael Fagan and Jason Couch. In fact, each of these three found their games in various ways down the stretch, with Couch regaining his form after knee surgery, Fagan adjusting to a change in equipment manufacturers and Malott finally figuring out how to win on the elusive Arena Bay side of the house that the National Bowling League built.
The first semifinal featured Fagan and Couch, and got the show off to an energetic start. Despite chopping the 3-5 in the first, Couch quickly settled down and tossed a double to get back in the match. Fagan, meanwhile threw a blistering turkey but missed the 2-8 in the 4th, then followed that up with another strong double. Couch hung around, but didn’t figure out the right lane until it was too late, throwing three strikes in the 10th. Fagan continued to pummel the pocket all game and posted a relatively easy 224-201 win to move into the final.
Semifinal number two featured the return of the reigning PBA Player of the Year and King of Bowling, Wes Malott taking on Jurek. From the start, both players looked extremely comfortable with Wes going spare, turkey, spare, double through seven frames, while Jurek burst out of the gate with the front six. But the match turned in the 8th when Big Wes tossed one a little wide for a washout, which he failed to convert, while Jurek added another double in the 8th-9th to take a commanding 42-pin lead. Even though Wes lost, he looked very good, which should make next Sunday’s epic match against Rhino Page in the PBA World Championship LIVE semifinals even more tasty.
Once again the ladies stepped in to contest their final match, and this time it was Kelly Kulick facing Carolyn Dorin-Ballard for the title. Both ladies were making their second appearances of the World Series, with Kulick already posting a win in the Women’s World Championship, while CDB finished second in the Chameleon Championship.
If you remember, in the Chameleon show, Dorin-Ballard struggled with the dry-ness of the lanes. Well this week, she had just the opposite problem, as her challenge was how to get her ball to roll up strong enough on the gobs of oil now found on the PBA’s new Shark pattern. Despite that, by hitting the pocket on six of her first seven shots, she looked to be in control of the match, building a 25-pin lead heading into the 8th.
A chopped 3-6 trimmed her lead down to the low double-digits in that frame and then the oily lanes really caught up with her in the 9th, as her strike attempt skidded into the pins and bounced right like Rodney Dangerfield’s throw in that old Miller beer commercial, almost leaving the dreaded “sour apple” or “lily” 5-7-10 split (the headpin bounced off the wall to take out the 5 late). After missing that, she went nine-spare, strike in the 10th for a 182, forcing Kulick to step up and throw a strike in the 10th for the win.
Making an unbelievably gutsy ball change in the 9th, Kulick stepped up and threw not one, but two dead-flush strikes for a 197-182 win, capping off an excellent World Series of Bowling that was probably only surpassed in its success by the run of her World Championship victim Shannon Pluhowsky.
The men’s final was a well-bowled affair that came down to the wire and then some. Fagan jumped an arrow or so left of where he was in his first match, while Jurek changed balls to a shinier, less aggressive ball to play in about the same place he was in his first match.
To say that Mike Fagan throws the ball good is a little bit like saying Michael Jackson was an OK dancer. All the young star did was throw perfect, pocket seeking lasers all game. Unfortunately, the pins weren’t cooperating all that much so he only had four strikes and five wicked ten pins to show for it heading into the 10th. Jurek put together an early big lead but lost nearly all of it when his ball decided to hook an extra two boards or so in the 6th (this was verified both by Jurek as well as CATS, as the graphic showed that the shot was thrown exactly on-line with exact same speed and rev rate, proving once again that bowling is the most maddening sport in the world because of its invisible and ever-changing obstacles).
Jack made the world-class adjustment in the 8th, stringing together a turkey that brought him to the brink of ending his 14-year winless drought, but as he later admitted, the moment was too much for him to handle and he made a terrible shot in the 11th. The resulting 7, spare give him 218, allowing Fagan the opportunity to throw three in the 10th for a one-pin victory. Fagan calmly ripped the first two racks to shreds, then planted the third one half pocket, sending a decent messenger back off the wall for the still-upright 10-pin. The messenger gave the 10 a small kiss as it fell off into the pit, wiggling it but not knocking it over. The match was tied at 218, sending us into a one-ball roll-off for all the wheat.
Jurek calmed his nerves by this time and struck high flush on his first shot. Fagan needed a strike to extend the match, but his shot sailed way wide, catching the infamous Shark OB and leaving a 1-2. The wait for Jurek was over and he was able to pick up his second career trophy and, more importantly, the comforting self-proof that he still does belong out on Tour with the best bowlers in the world.
The telecast was quite a fitting end to the World Series of Bowling, and now we will get to enjoy our first live telecast of the season with this Sunday’s PBA World Championship finals from Northrock Lanes in Wichita at 1pm ET. I, for one, will not be missing it (mostly because I’ll be there in person covering the event for Xtra Frame, so my recap may be a bit late next week until I have a chance to watch the show on TV) and I’m sure you won’t either!
Plus, don’t forget all of the other awesome stuff we have going on this week on Xtra Frame, with the return of live bowling action from the Pepsi Red, White and Blue Open starting with Tuesday's Bonus coverage, then continuing all week long and then the all-new Chris Barnes Challenge presented by Columbia 300 this Saturday. I’ll be seeing you there!
