Match Play at the Earl Anthony Memorial

If you love bowling like I do and you have Xtra Frame, you find your eyes glued to your computer monitor, especially when live match play is in progress. So, it was with great reluctance that I left to attend a party last night with my wife and miss the exciting action that took place in the men's Round of 8 and the women's semifinal match play.

However, I did get home and tune in just in time to see Stafanie Nation finish with nine strikes in a row to defeat Shannon Pluhowsky 259-244 in the seventh and final game of their great match after Pluhowsky began by winning the first three games and appeared to have the match all but locked up. That just goes to reinforce the trite but true saying, "It ain't over till it's over." I try to remember that whenever I'm bowling in competition and my opposition has a big lead. I keep on trying.

I was disappointed that PJ Haggerty lost to Steve Weber in the Round of 16, and I wish Jason Belmonte had made it to the TV finals instead of losing to Sean Rash in the Round of 8, but the men's and women's field for Sunday's ESPN's live telecast looks like a solid one with Sean Rash facing Mike Machuga, and Anthony LaCaze taking on Mike Wolfe in the men's semifinal matches, and Lynda Barnes matching up with Stefanie Nation in the women's final.

I have a few comments about what I observed yesterday watching match play on Xtra Frame.

First of all, I'm very impressed by the way Sean Rash is throwing the ball. He generates so much speed and turnl, but he's controlling it extremely well on the demanding condition they put out this week for the Anthony Memorial. Xtra Frame commentator Jeff Mark said that some people may not like Rash on the lanes where he can act like a bit of a jerk with his super-competitive demeanor and frequent balks on the approach, but he's a very nice guy off the lanes and recently organized and hosted a fundraising "Bowl for Wishes" Super Regional in Wichita Kansas.

Second, Xtra Frame takes questions from viewers while matches are underway, and one viewer wrote in with a question that's often occurred to me: When the oil on the lanes breaks down and the balls hook as much as they have in Dublin, why do bowlers keep moving so deep inside and throwing such big hooks with their relatively aggressive balls instead of switching to far less aggressive equipment and playing farther outside and straighter. "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark replied that as the bowlers keep throwing their oil sapping reactive resin balls and progressively move farther and farther inside as the oil breaks down, they create a V-shaped pattern where just about any kind of ball you throw in that area is going to hook too early and lose too much of its energy to carry well at the pocket if it even hits the pocket, which is hard to do when the ball hooks right off your hand. So the bowlers pretty much have to keep moving inside.

I still don't understand this oil pattern and oil breakdown business as well as I'd like, because I see people like Walter Ray Williams continue to play far to the right of the other bowlers even after the lanes have gotten very dry, and I've seen him score very well doing this, making the Round of 28 this week where he lost to a blistering hot Patrick Allen in six games. I guess guys like Walter Ray tend to play outside the V-shaped oil burnout pattern that the other players create, and he keeps his ball more controllable with his end-over-end roll. But I still wonder if the best way to bowl on really dry lanes is to keep moving inside even as far as having to stand in front of the ball return and take a three step approach and/or loft the ball five or ten feet out onto the lane, or if one wouldn't be better off using some combination of equipment, speed, and release that allows one to stay further outside and play straighter with a more controllable ball reaction.

Jeff Mark also commented that, as a former Ebonite ball rep, he used to work with Walter Ray and try to get him to use equipment with more exotic layouts, but Walter liked to have a "certain look" with his ball and preferred to stick to the simpler, more basic layouts that consistently gave him that look. Given his incredible success, I wonder if simpler isn't generally better than the widespread push to increasing technical complexity in bowling equipment. Or would guys like Walter Ray do even better if they listened to the ball reps and tried more complex combinations of coverstocks and layouts?

Finally, someone asked about the difference between European and American bowlers, and Jeff Mark replied that he thought European bowlers tended to be much more sound in their fundamentals and especially their spare shooting because they grow up on more demanding lane conditions and learn to make their spares and grind it out with solid fundamentals instead of relying as much on power and being as sloppy in their execution and spare shooting as American bowlers even at the professional level tend to do and be.

I thought this was a very interesting observation that supports my belief that bowling centers in this country need to start putting out more difficult conditions , especially for their junior bowlers, and encourage them to become better in their fundamentals. I, for one, would love to see more difficult house shots such as the Red, White, and Blue patterns of the Pepsi tournament that aired last week and, of course, the animal patterns of the PBA Experience leagues. But I can understand why bowling centers would be reluctant to do this. They're afraid they'd lose business to the centers that keep their conditions easy and their scoring inflated.