Walter Ray and Ryan Ciminelli are Looking Good

I'm watching the first games of the Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship and am seeing a lot of slow balls and weak 10's to start the day. That's no surprise. But what does surprise me is that some guys are tearing up the lanes anyway.

Of course, it's not like they're bowling on oil flooded lanes with those cheap plastic balls of theirs. But, still, I expected the scores to be lower than they are so far. And I especially expected low rev, small hook guys like Walter Ray to be down near the bottom of the standings.

Instead, Walter, who's crossing with the stellar group of Steve Jaros, Ryan Shafer, and Mike Fagan, sits in fourth place after four games. Although it's very early in the proceedings, I should know by now not to count Walter out of any tournament unless and until the math says he's out. As legendary bowling announcer Fred Wolf used to say, "If you can do it with a pencil, you can do it with a bowling ball." And this adage seems especially true of the truly great Walter Ray Williams, even at 50 years of age. It will be interesting to see how he manages when those plastic balls carry down a lot of oil.

But the guy who's REALLY tearing them up is probably the least surprising of all. It's Ryan Ciminelli (see video below) sitting at the top of the heap, and I wouldn't be surprised if he stays pretty close to the top spot throughout the tournament so long as he's able to play outside and juice the ball to the pocket. This guy has serious power wedded to a pretty solid game overall. I think he's going to be a Tour monster with a few more years of seasoning. And even though he's a damn leftie, I hope my prediction comes true. I love to watch him bowl.