Scott Norton's Commentary on PBA Xtra Frame

I listened yesterday to a little of PBA Xtra Frame and greatly enjoyed Scott Norton's astute and very personable commentary.

When he was asked about the difference between bowling regional tournaments and bowling on tour he explained that when one goes out on tour, one has to be a veritable "sponge" absorbing an enormous amount of information about equipment, physical adjustments, lane typographies, oils, and overall conditions from house to house and even segments of each house, and so forth, and that the touring pros who've been out there a long time have a tremendous edge in that they've already learned all this stuff while the newcomers are struggling with an impossibly steep learning curve.

He also mentioned that it took him awhile to learn to watch other bowlers with games closest to his own to help him line up the fastest on a given condition and that he initially watched Parker Bohn but discovered that Mike Scroggins and Patrick Allen had games closer to his own and thus were more helpful to him to watch.

Fortunately, Scott, who is busy lawyering when he isn't bowling, seems to have been remarkably equal to the task of learning what he needs to know, having already won the Las Vegas Chameleon Championship on TV earlier this season, finished 27th in the Tournament of Champions, and made the top 16 last week, and, if I'm not mistaken, he may be well on his way to a Rookie of the Year season on Tour.

At one point yesterday, Scott was asked how much his Hall-of-Fame mother Virginia Norton influenced his bowling, and he answered that, although she's been his bowling coach his whole life, she never forced him to bowl any particular way or at all. He said that what influenced him most was being around his mom and other top women bowlers when he was an impressionable kid and learning to bowl more of a woman's finesse kind of game instead of the power game that seems so dominant today among the men.

For more information on Scott Norton, please check out this profile article in the San Francisco Examiner, and you can watch his dominating Chameleon Championship title match performance against Sean Rash below.