Since the March Madness angle of this week's Go RVing Match Play Championship has been discussed pretty extensively, I thought I'd write about a few of the aspects of this event that help to provide some unique challenges to the second event of The Extreme Swing.
The first of these challenges is the all match play format. Instead of 14 qualifying games to determine the 32 qualifiers to advance to match play, the tournament will be contested with a bracket style, best 4 out of 7 games, single elimination match play. Not only is there the pressure of having to win or go home, you have to be smart and have a strategy to play the lanes to give you the best ball reaction and chance to win. You only have one person to beat, which is better than having to beat 32 to qualify to get to the next round, but can also be detrimental if you run into a player who's hot at the wrong time (well, for you at least!).
The second challenge that the players are going to face this week is having to navigate two of the PBA patterns, with the left lane dressed with the Shark pattern and the right lane with the Cheetah. In a format like this, you must have an uncanny ability to stay focused on the task at hand. You have the Shark pattern, which at 43 ft. is the longest of PBA patterns and tends to have players playing deeper inside angles to take advantage of the length of oil and to avoid the out of bounds on each side of the lane. This pattern seems to favor the power players since they thrive on playing the deep inside angle. Then you have the Cheetah pattern which is the shortest in length at 35 ft. and forces players to play an outside line to the pocket.
So that means that guys are going to be doing a lot of things that may be outside of their typical comfort zones. You're going to end up using one ball layed out a certain way with a certain amount of surface texture on the left lane, playing a completely different line and probably a different ball speed and release. Then on the right lane you're going to end up in a different area of the lane using a ball that does something totally different, and might even feel a shade different (if you don't have one of those interchangeable thumb slugs). It can just get downright confusing if you're not on top of your game.
This might not be the boldest of predictions, but my choice to make it all the way is Chris Barnes. Chris is the defending champion of this event, beating Walter Ray in a 3 game total pinfall contest on last year's telecast. I think this type of event is one Chris will always excel in. His ability to make an infinite amount of adjustments, play different angles on the lane with different releases, and his ability to manage his ball reaction is what sets him apart from the rest of the field. Now Chris did benefit from the change to the total pinfall format on last year's show instead of best 2 of 3, because Walter Ray did beat him 2 out of the 3 games. However, because of the total pinfall format Chris won. I predict that Chris is going to repeat to exact a measure of revenge for going undefeated through the Masters field and losing one game on TV to Walter Ray.
I'm going to give the top 10 this week off since it was on off week and no changes would be justified, but I'll leave these questions on deck to be open for discussion:
1. After winning to follow up his runner up finish at the US Open, will Mike Scroggins catch Bill O'Neill for the Chris Schenkel Player of the Year points race?
2. Can Brian Kretzer become as dominant on the PBA tour as he was during his days on the megabucks scene?
3. Is anyone else as excited about the Mark Roth Geico Plastic Ball Championship as I am?