Pete Weber Wins 69th PBA U.S. Open

"Dad, I know you were watching. I know you're proud, and I'm sorry I broke your record." ~ Pete Weber

Until Sunday, February 26, 2012, nobody owned more U.S. Open titles than the late, great Don Carter and Dick Weber. Then Dick Weber's Hall of Fame son Pete stepped onstage to defeat Ryan Shafer 223-191, Jason Belmonte 225-213, and Mike Fagan 215-214 in one of the best-bowled and most intense televised stepladder finals in TV bowling history en route to an unprecedented fifth U.S. Open, ninth major, and 36th tour title that had no less than bowling luminary and writer Jeff Richgels opining that PDW may well be the best bowler of all time.

And as much as raw statistics might still award that glittering honor to Walter Ray Williams Jr. or Earl Anthony, there's no avoiding the fact that, as Richgels writes, "Pete has been at the top of bowling through more eras than either Earl or Walter Ray, starting at the end of plastic through urethane to reactive resin...You simply can't deny that Pete has stayed on top through more changes in the game than any bowler in history. And look at how much his game has changed from when he was a teenager who arguably had the most powerful game in bowling to almost a finesse player who is little more than a tweener in the current era of two-handed ultra power players. What hasn't changed is his almost unreal competitiveness and will to win that has enabled him to rise to big occasions as much as any player in history."

Richgels writes that he's still not sure who's the greatest bowler ever but that Pete Weber's phenomenal performance Sunday at the age of 49 has "changed the debate" for him. I guess I'd have to say that the same goes for me. Bad boy that PDW has been over the years and was again on Sunday, there's no denying his stupendous bowling accomplishments that rise to the level that one of his opponents Sunday, the immensely talented Jason Belmonte, characterized as "inhuman." I'd call them superhuman.

I'll have more to say about all of this and about this year's PBA U.S. Open and Sunday telecast over a series of upcoming blogposts, but I want to end this entry with videos of yesterday's wonderful matches for you to savor. It's been a long time since bowling has received the respect it deserves, and, regrettably, Sunday's finals probably won't change that a whole lot.

But it should.

For a concise summary of the entire 2012 PBA U.S. Open, be sure to check out this article on Jef's Bowling Blog, and for a more detailed summary of the televised finals, you can read Bill Vint's wrap up on the PBA website. Finally, you can watch the videos below to behold what words cannot fully convey of all three matches.

Don Carter, RIP

"I believe he was the greatest bowler that ever lived. He was a master of any condition, great in the clutch and great coming from behind. He had all the attributes of a great athlete. He was there to bowl and to win. I often thought that if I could build a robot of the perfect bowler, I would take most of the parts from Don Carter." ~ Churck Pezzano, PBA charter member and historian

"It's hard to explain what makes Don so great. All I know is that he's the greatest thing that ever happened to bowling. He's fabulous, above and beyond everybody in the game." ~ Dick Weber, 1962 Bowlers Journal story

"Don was one of the greatest bowlers who ever lived, but he had some other things that made him great. He was a great athlete. He won two 100-game tournaments in one year and I don't know how many other bowlers could take that kind of punishment. And he had the ability to focus better than anyone I've ever seen. On the lanes, he was in his own world, but off the lanes, he was a true gentleman. I had a lot of respect for him, as a bowler and as a man." ~ Carmen Salvino

Don Carter died last night at the age of 85.

If you're reading this blog, you've surely heard of Don Carter even though he retired from professional bowling in 1972 and was at his peak from the 1950's through the early 60's. But if you're my age or older and have been a bowling fan most of your life, the name Don Carter is almost synonymous with godhood. He was that revered by bowlers and bowling fans all over the world.

His bowling accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Between 1953 and 1961, he was six-time national Bowler of the Year. He won the BPAA All-Star Tournament (now known as the U.S. Open) four times. He won seven PBA titles of which five were "majors," five World Invitational titles, the ABC Masters, and four other ABC tournament titles. He was lead off for the awesome five-man Budweiser team of St. Louis that shot an incredible 3,858 series in 1958 that stood as an untouchable national team record for 36 years. He was the first president of the PBA. He became a charter member of the PBA Hall of Fame in 1975. Bowling Magazine ranked him as the Greatest Bowler of All-time in 1970 and the second greatest bowler of the 20th century in a 2000 poll. Bowlers Journal awarded him the title of Bowler of the Century in 2000, and in 2009 he was voted the 11th greatest player in PBA history. He also bowled the first 800 series on TV when he shot 809 on "National Bowling Champions." The list of firsts and other great accomplishments could go on and on.

Yet, there was more to Don Carter's glittering success story than his performances on the lanes and the accolades he received for them. He appeared regularly in TV commercials and, believe it or not, in 1964 he became the first athlete in any sport to sign an endorsement contract for $1 million. The ten-year contract was with bowling equipment manufacturer Ebonite. And prior to his focusing his efforts on bowling, he was a high school All-Star football and baseball player and signed as an infielder and pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1946 but quit because of all the traveling, which he hated, to pursue bowling full time. Chuck Pezzano also remembers this of Carter: "One thing that many people didn't know is that he was very compassionate and helped a lot of people who might have fallen on hard times during his career."

If one peruses the PBA message board, where irreverence toward bowling and even bowling's biggest stars seems to be the rule rather than the exception, one sees nothing but respect for Don Carter and sadness over his passing. But as commenter Fred Lowenhaupt puts it: "It's always a sad time when one of our bowling heroes passes away. But with Don we should be celebrating his long productive life rather than the sadness of his passing at age 85."

I agree in principle, but my heart is filled with sadness. For as another commenter in the forum says, "Bowling is running out of legends," and, I may add, at a time when it can least afford it.

RIP Don Carter, bowling's original superstar.

You can read Bill Vint's excellent PBA.com article on Don Carter's life here, Terry Bigham's bowl.com obituary here, and below you can watch videos of the great Don Carter's stellar career on and off the lanes.

Billy Hardwick's Story

"His focus and concentration were unreal. When he got into that zone, the other guys would recognize it and say, 'Well, I guess we are playing for second place again this week.'"

--Phantom Radio's Len Nicholson speaking of his lifelong friend Billy Hardwick

I spent much of my boyhood with my grandparents in San Mateo, CA. My grandfather bowled and watched professional bowling on TV, and that got me interested in bowling too. If you lived in San Mateo and loved bowling, you knew about Billy Hardwick.

Hardwick, born in 1941, was a young, local bowling legend who had already became one of the best bowlers in the world by the mid 1960's, and my grandfather and I were very excited when he made the televised finals of the first Firestone Tournament of Champions in 1965. He went on to win the title against Dick Weber and the $25,000 first prize. This sounded like otherworldly money to me, a boy from a working class family who had just turned twelve.

Hardwick was one of my favorite bowlers for a long time after that and went on to have a relatively short but absolutely stellar career that landed him #12 on the PBA top 50 list of all time. He retired with 17 national titles and won 7 of them in 1969 alone, was the first bowler to win the "triple crown" of the TOC, U.S. Open, and PBA National Championship, and still holds an all-time PBA record by averaging 271 for 8 games at the 1969 Japan Cup, which he accomplished throwing a rubber ball.

However, it was only after reading an article recently in bowl.com that I came to an even greater appreciation of how amazing Billy Hardwick's career was given the obstacles he had to overcome. For one thing, he sustained a severe childhood injury to the ring finger of his bowling hand that made it very inflexible and led him to win his first Bowler of the Year award bowling with his index and middle finger. After that, he was christened "the boy with the golden claw."

Hardwick also had rheumatoid arthritis early on that prevented him from straightening his arms and prompted his doctor to tell him he'd "be crippled by the age of 28." Ironically, it was in his 28th year that Hardwick won a record-setting 7 titles, a season's total second only to Mark Roth's 8 titles in 1978.

I also didn't know that when Hardwick first came out on tour in 1962 with an awkward style a Bowler's Journal article described as looking "like he's falling out of a tree," he didn't cash in his first 17 tournaments, and the great Don Carter finally admonished him to "Go home." He did until he was able to raise enough money to come back and with indomitable determination and ungodly accuracy start dominating the tour.

But after one of his children, Billy Jr., died suddenly in his crib, his first marriage dissolved, and his second wife gave birth to a baby who died two days later, Billy lost his competitive spirit. As he puts it, "At that point, who really gives a damn about bowling? People say they understand, but until you actually lose two children--including an infant--there is no way to describe what it was like. At the time, I was No. 1 in the world, and I said 'So what?' I just didn't care. You just check my records after that, because they're all zeros."

Well, actually, Hardwick did win another tournament seven years later and then lost the final match to Marshall Holman by only five pins in the Firestone Tournament of Champions the following week. For a brief moment, he had regained the all-consuming will to win that lifted him to the top of the bowling world years before. But after the Firestone, he never regained that spirit and quit not long after and, according to his son Chris Hardwick, hasn't bowled even recreationally for over 25 years. However, he is the proprietor of Billy Hardwick's All Star Lanes in Memphis, TN, and in an interview in 2005 said of himself, "Self-pity was my best friend. Now I wake up with a smile on my face."

You can read the entire bowl.com article here, and below is a reposting of the wonderful commercial he did for Miller High Life followed by his close match with Marshall Holman in the 1976 Firestone Tournament of Champions.

Make the Pros Bowl With Plastic

I love the PBA plastic ball championships. And, if the truth be told, I wish there were more of them. I hate how having the right ball in one's hands seems to have become more important than throwing the ball with the right speed along the right line with the right kind of roll, and how the touring, ball staff member pros with their armies of ball reps and unlimited access to equipment seem to have such an unfair advantage over their less privileged brethren.

In fact, I'd be delighted if all elite tournaments limited the players to the same cheap plastic balls and, better still, permitted no modifications to the simple pancake layouts and ball surfaces so that the player himself decided his own fate instead of the ball in his hands. The oil patterns could vary from tournament to tournament, but the balls would remain the same.

Yes, I suppose the ball manufacturers could continue to sell balls to the general public in order for them and their pro shop retailers to remain in business, and the public could continue to exhaust their bank accounts to shoot their ridiculous scores on "bumper lane" house conditions with the newest high tech balls that hook like crazy right out of the box and blast the pins to smithereens until they absorb so much oil after a few games that they lose their punch and it's time to buy another ball. But the pros would soar above this insanity.

Of course, the cat is too far and long out of the bag for this to ever happen. Forevermore, elite bowlers will have to focus more and more on ball physics (or have the right people in their "stable" to do the focusing for them) and less and less on technique, and I think PBA bowling will likely suffer from it until it, perhaps, eventually dies. And guys like me who can't afford the newest, freshest equipment and who aren't ball physicists might as well forget about competing in scratch tournaments at any level.

I think I'll watch a video of a time when men were men who bowled 100-game tournaments and bowlers didn't have to carry a truckload of balls and ball reps around with them to excel.

Bowling Video of the Day--Don Carter's Easy Opening Can

Once upon a time bowling was respected enough for its greatest legends to appear in TV commercials, and not just commercials aired only during bowling telecasts.

Well, maybe it wasn't pure respect for bowling and for Don Carter's legendary bowling prowess that landed it and him in the commercial below. It was probably more a gentle derision of bowling's less-than-macho nature as a sport coupled with bemusedly begrudging acceptance of bowling's popularity among the beer-drinking, sports-loving masses.

In any case, it was clever and funny, and bowlers didn't take offense. They laughed and appreciated the backhanded acknowledgment of their sport and of one of its biggest stars, just as I think bowlers today would if, say, Jason Belmonte appeared in a similar kind of commercial.

Do you think that will ever happen, or has bowling irrevocably sunk too low in the public's estimation?

Is Jason Belmonte Better Than Don Carter?

Who was better? Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds? Oscar Robertson or Michael Jordan? Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods?

People have endlessly discussed and debated these comparisons in all kinds of sports, bowling included. Who was better? Don Carter or Earl Anthony or Walter Ray Williams Jr.? Carmen Salvino or Mark Roth or Jason Belmonte?

What's more, last week's GEICO Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship has many wondering more than ever how yesterday's greats would have performed on today's conditions with today's equipment, and today's greats on yesterday's conditions with yesterday's equipment. How would Don Carter in his prime have fared on synthetic lanes rolling reactive resin over modern PBA oil patterns? Conversely, how would Jason Belmonte today fare throwing hard rubber on old wooden lanes coated with lacquer? And what would the answers, if we even could know them, tell us about who from different bowling eras was or is "better"?

I've been following a fascinating discussion in pbaforum.com of this very topic. Some say today's bowlers are better because they're generally stronger and in better shape, have undergone more rigorous and systematic training, know more about biomechanics and bowling physics, can generate and control more power, and so on. Others maintain that if you equate bowling greatness with bowling skill, and evaluate bowling skill primarily in terms of accuracy and ability to repeat shots, convert spares, control ball speeds, and alter releases, yesterday's stars had it, with some possible exceptions, over today's stars with the latters' racks of high tech bowling balls and armies of ball reps following them around, charting their ball reactions, and shoving the right equipment in their hands for the moment.

Here are some of the more interesting if not insightful excerpts from the PBA forum discussion:

I believe that...just as we would expect the older era bowlers to adapt to modern times...you should also expect that if Belmo went back in time, he would adapt his game to lacquer and the equipment of the day as well.

Better, in some ways yes, and others no, let's just say they are diffrent. There is always going to be a few greats who's games can be played no matter what is out there and with whatever they need to use, but their are a lot of good players that only made within a few years then fade away as the environment changes.

Yeah, I believe today's best is better than yesterday's best, in the same way an F-18 pilot is better than Charles Lindburgh or Jimmy Johnson is better than Cale Yarborough.

When we have debates like this...I do find it interesting, and it also makes me appreciate someone like WRW all the more...because he developed his game during the days of the LT-48 and Yellow Dot...came strong on the scene with urethane and is still one of the great bowlers of this era of reactive resin and unbalanced weight blocks....and what does WRW have in spades??? ACCURACY!!! I will always argue - even in today's game, the PBA is still about accuracy over RPM and equipment strength. I agree with many of the assessments about leagues and local centers - but the PBA is still a challenge for the most part, and accuracy/repeating shots still wins.

Belmo would certainly hold his own with any bowling ball on any bowling lane with any finish. Dude struck on a crooked lane on the sidewalk in rain on a morning show!

What do you think?

Bowling Video of the Day--3/19/10

Yesterday I posted a video of legendary Don Carter winning the 1952 BPAA All Star tournament in the men 's division. I'm following that up today with a video of the equally legendary Marion Ladewig winning her fourth consecutive All Star title in the women's division that same year.

Marion was the Bowling Writers Association of America's Female Bowler of the Year a record nine times between 1950 and 1963, and, in the video, you'll hear announcer Fred Wolf say that she was so dominant at that time that there was serious talk of her competing in the men's division next time around. Her 205 average for the tournament was the second highest among the women AND men that year. Here is the YouTube description of the video:

"The great Marion Ladewig at the height of her bowling career as she wins her 4th straight All Star title back when the All Star was the biggest tournament in bowling, for both men and women. Legendary bowling announcer Fred Wolf on the call, years before he would become known as the voice on Championship Bowling."

I love this stuff, and I kind of wish bowling was as simple today as it was back then in terms of equipment, oil patterns, and other ways. Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression that it was more about how well a person executed over many games than it was about having the right ball rep help you choose the right ball layout and surface and praying that your ball, axis tilt, and rev rate matched up better than everyone else's with the particular conditions in play that week. It just seems to me, rightly or wrongly, that bowling is less about the bowler's pure skill today than it was in 1952.

We can't go back to those times, but I sure enjoy watching them.