--Donnie Layman, from pba.com article Go RVing Match Play Championship: The Long & Short of It
It just goes to show that you need to take bowling predictions with more than just the proverbial grain of salt, but with a whole bucketful of it. Many predicted, yours truly included, that Chris Barnes would handily win his first best-of-seven, single-elimination match of the Go RVing Match Play Championship and continue right on into the televised final where he'd overcome his bad luck on TV and win the title.
After all, he's widely thought of as the best bowler in the world and a preeminent match play bowler. What's more, he's bowling on pairs with a very different pattern--Cheetah on the right and Shark on the left--on each lane, and this makes him doubly likely to win because of his legendary ability to adjust to differing lane conditions. Finally, his first opponent was an amateur, albeit a successful one in high-stakes tournaments, by the name of Alex Aguiar (see embedded video below) who entered the tournament as the 61st seed by finishing fifth in the TQR. On paper, it looked as though All-World Chris Barnes had a virtual lock on victory.
So much for paper. When the rubber met the road or, in this case, the reactive resin met the oil coated synthetic material, Alex Aguiar destroyed Chris Barnes four games to one, shooting a blistering 801 series for his last three. Chris Barnes wasn't even close.
And the multitudes who predicted that #1 seed Walter Ray would readily defeat #64 seed J. Warhol fared no better. Warhol crushed
The moral of the story is to not take bowling predictions seriously. Actually, there are two morals of the story so far as I'm concerned. The second is that single elimination matches from the get-go are a travesty and should be banned immediately and permanently from PBA tournaments. They can eliminate the best bowlers in the tournament before they even have a chance to warm up and show why they're the best bowlers in the tournament.
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