On this week's up and down (and up and down again) episode of the PBA Tour on ESPN, we were greeted with the first of five PBA World Championship telecasts.
The road to the World Championship title, as we saw in this week's edition, is sure to be marked with as many bumps, bruises, shocking reversals of fortune, laughs and tears as it will fallen pins.
This week's show served as the finals of the "Don Carter Division", which is one of four pods made up of the 16 PBA World Championship qualifiers. The players who made the shows (this one and the next three) qualified through 32 games in the four animal pattern events during week 1 of the PBA World Series of Bowling, then an additional 8-game round to make a total of 40.
This show featured four finalists, led by #4 qualifier Stuart Williams (who had choice of lane pattern by virtue of his high seeding - he picked the 37-foot Viper), and followed by two-hander Osku Palermaa, Dom Barrett and Jack Jurek. Jurek was the lone American on the telecast, and also the lone stroker, which proved to be a big disadvantage once the show got underway. Remember, with the eliminator format in play the goal for the finalists every game is not to be the low man on the totem pole.
Barrett "dom"-inated game 1, shooting a stellar 257, followed by fellow Englishman Williams with 215. Palermaa and Jurek both struggled with transition, each grinding it out for survival. Jurek suffered two early opens, and then was never able to put together a string of strikes, resulting in a 169, while Palermaa kept his head above water to eke by with a 187. But the highlight of the match had to be two tear-"jurek"-ing interviews with Gentleman Jack. Grab a tissue and watch below, if you dare:
Anyone who suffers from a blatant lack of respect for the players who toil on the PBA Tour need look no further than this interview to understand the reason why these individuals do what they do. I've never heard any ad exec so emotionally involved in his work so as to render him speechless for almost an entire minute trying to talk about it. Jurek graphically illustrates here in an incredibly real fashion that the gratification of winning and being considered the best at something trumps any monetary compensation - and that in itself warrants more respect than any multi-million-dollar-earning, ne'er-do-well, never-won-a-thing NBA or NFL player should ever deserve from us. But alas, I digress.
Game/Match/Round #2 moved on without our beloved American hero, and this time it was Williams who struggled with his ball reaction. Falling behind Palermaa (Barrett again set the pace, this time with a 201 score) Williams valiantly fought to stay alive after running into carry problems due to being forced further left because of the transition. His sarcastic utterance of the word, "DONE!" after making a last-ditch move that resulted in a through-the-nose 6-10 leave punctuated the droll Englishman's run in this year's World Championship, as Williams came up short to Osku 188-170. But the fun that Beef Stu brings to the ESPN telecasts is something you'll surely want to watch for when he surfaces again in the Bayer Viper Open finals coming up on Sunday, January 22.
The final match featured the two players who Williams believes to be Europe's best - Barrett and Palermaa. After leading the first two rounds, the havoc Palermaa's rev rate causes to the oil pattern finally began to catch up with Barrett's ball reaction in the 7th frame, causing him to go high. As this happened, Palermaa finally started to get comfortable, and a late string of strikes propelled him to a 223-188 win, and one of four spots in the PBA World Championship finals on January 15.
I enjoyed Barrett's interview during the final match, in which he regaled us with a few stories about Palermaa's uncanny ability to see numbers (he compared him to Rain Man and Neo from The Matrix in a span of 20 seconds) and showed a side of his personality that he obviously conceals out on the lanes. We'll get to see Barrett again for the Chameleon Open finals on February 12.
Palermaa was his usual steely, stoic self which makes you wonder if he is really comfortable under the TV lights. He seemed comfortable in his post-match interview with Randy Pedersen, and admitted that even though he doesn't necessarily love the eliminator format, that it surely helped him to advance while he was struggling to figure out the lanes. We'll have to see what happens in the finals on January 15, because you'd have to believe that if it takes him two games to warm up there, he'll likely be out of the tournament.
Well, that's it for this week. Remember, we still have three more Division finals to determine the three players who will take on Palermaa for the World Championship title, starting with next week's Hardwick Division, which features #2 seed Tom Smallwood, Venezuelan newcomer Ildemaro Ruiz, Colombia's Andres Gomez and Ryan Shafer. Be prepared for even more emotion next week!
PS - I thought adding Chris Barnes to the booth to banter with Randy and add even more technical insight into the show made things even more interesting. I'm looking forward to watching how those two progress over the next several shows.