The Real King of Bowling

I am really excited! I just watched a live bowling match for the ages. It was at the USBC Masters in Reno. Chris Barnes was bowling Wes Malott in the winners bracket in a three game total pin match. Barnes had trouble carrying strikes the first two games and Malott jumped out to a 54 pin lead going into the final game. It really looked like Chris, as great as he is, was out of it against last year's PBA Bowler of the Year and "King of Bowling" Wes Malott. The commentators were speculating that if Barnes shot a 270 game and Wes faltered a little, Barnes could still pull it out, but I don't think they seriously believed that this would happen.

Well, Barnes moved his line left and proceeded to pack every ball solidly in the pocket for about as perfect a 300 game as you'll ever see and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in one of the most impressive clutch performances I've ever seen. As Xtra Frame's redoubtable "bowling doctor" Jeff Mark said, there has been nobody in Chris Barnes' league for the past three or so years, and he just showed as emphatically as one could ever hope to why he's the best bowler in the world.

And Xtra Frame just proved, as emphatically as possible, why it's a true bowling fan's dream. For just $65 a year, you can see what I just saw (although the service is free all this week) and much, much more over the course of a season, and, as Jeff Mark said today, you can learn enough by watching the bowling and listening to the expert commentary of guys like Mark and guests like Ritchie Allen, John Jowdy, Mark Baker, Sean Rash, Parker Bohn, Wes Malott, and Chris Barnes, more than enough to recoup your expense several times over if you bowl good leagues or tournaments.

I can't wait for this evening's matches that will decide who makes it to the televised finals Sunday. By the way, look out for Walter Ray. The 50-year-old wonder of wonders is steamrolling his way through match play right now, having flattened his latest opponent, Mike Scroggins, into a pancake and tossed him out of the winners bracket with a 778 series after destroying Tom Smallwood and eliminating him from competition with a 734 series in the match before that.