Chaz Dennis is the youngest person ever to bowl a sanctioned 300 game. He did it at Hillcrest Lanes in Columbus, Ohio on December, 2006 at the tender age of 10 years, 2 months, and 27 days. He did it with the two-handed or twin-grip style popularized by Jason Belmonte and Osku Palermaa, and his three game series that day was 772.
Below is a profile that a Columbus TV news program did of Chaz shortly after his accomplishment.
I don't generally write here about my own bowling. After all, compared to the pros and elite amateurs I've been posting about, I'm a non-entity. I'm not now nor have I ever been a member of the PBA. I've never won any big tournaments of any kind. I've never even averaged over 230 on an easy house pattern, although I 've gotten close a few times. Like I say, I'm a bowling nobody who loves to blog about bowling somebodys and loves the sport as a whole.
But I would like to mention in passing that, for the umpteenth time this season, I almost bowled 300 in my Monday night league last night. I started with the first nine in the second game of my second three game set and then had my tenth ball hang a little on my thumb and hit the pocket light to leave a weak 10 pin.
But the real fun happened after league. The lanes stayed on and I threw some practice balls in my best, albeit poor, two-handed imitation of Jason Belmonte and, at one point, strung several strikes with my Columbia Blue Dot plastic spare ball and even with my Vapor Zone reactive resin ball, and, better still, I was able to get pretty close to my target on most of those shots.
I've tried throwing two handed before (see video below), but last night I felt like I was able to get more speed on the ball coupled with a more powerful release and better accuracy, and I'm now more determined than ever to get better at the two-handed game so that I can always pull it out of the bag, so to speak, if my A game isn't working as desired.
It's not that radical a thing for me to do since I threw my strike ball without my thumb for many years and enjoyed moderate success with it in leagues and tournaments. But when I throw the ball two-handed, it seems easier on my wrist and I'm able to manipulate the axis rotation better, and, even being the relatively old geezer that I am, I think I might be able to get pretty good at it.
I know there are concerns about the wear and tear it may inflict on the body over time, especially on the back of an older body like mine. But I guess I'm willing to take that chance, on a limited basis, and see what happens.
I can say one thing. It sure is fun generating all those revs and seeing the pins dance to their energy. It's also nice, as Randy Pedersen suggested during last Sunday's telecast, to bypass the thumb and eliminate the constant thumbhole adjustments and variations in release that are part and parcel of using the thumb.
And when I can learn to generate more speed and be more accurate and consistent bowling two-handed, it may be very fun indeed. I figure that if Walter Ray can work on his two-handed game and actually use it, as I've already seen him do, in PBA competition, I can take it up too and add it to my bowling repertoire.
How about you? Have you tried bowling two-handed? If so, how did you do? Do you think you might want to make it a part of your bowling bag of tricks?
I don't know why, but I assumed that all two-handed or twin grip bowlers threw their strike ball without their thumb. But as I listened to the commentary on PBA Xtra Frame this afternoon, I learned that left-handed PBA rookie and exempt two-handed player Cassidy Schaub bowls with his thumb.
I don't know why I'm so surprised by this. Yes, the ball comes off his hand very cleanly, and, yes, it has a million revs, just like Belmo's and Osku's, but Robert Smith can throw a million revs cleanly too. Nevertheless, I am surprised that Cassidy uses his thumb. And he used it to such good effect this week that he made it to the Round of 16 before finally losing to Brian Kretzer in seven games this afternoon.
I think we'll be seeing Cassidy Schaub on TV one of these days. Until then, check him out on Xtra Frame and in the video below.
"As far the game today having 'fair standard conditions', like the dodo bowlers of the early 1900's could do with dodo balls, so can two-handed bowlers with the modern ball. And that contradicts the founding fathers decision that "all bowling balls must be evenly balanced." A component to the game they felt was necessary in order to have "fair standard conditions."" --Ted Thompson, bowlingdigital.com
Ever since I saw Osku Palermaa showcase his two-handed or, as he calls it, "twin grip" style in the televised finals of the U.S. Open, I've been enthralled by it. When Jason Belmonte came along and won a national title with it, I became convinced that it was the proverbially "greatest thing since sliced bread."
However, not everyone shares my view of this technique. Some insist that it's a form of cheating. I've never understood why they think this, other than the fact that some people reflexively believe that anything that departs significantly from the mainstream modus operandi of a sport and appears to confer a significant advantage over conventional technique to boot can't be fair or right.
For instance, when Dick Fosbury started high-jumping backwards and even won an Olympic gold medal using this revolutionary technique, he and his style had their share of detractors. Yet, the "Fosbury Flop" is now the norm in high-jumping, just as two-handed bowling may be in the future if observations reveal that it's not too damaging to the body over the medium to long term.
Nevertheless, bowlingdigital columnist Ted Thompson has posted an article that at least presents some kind of rational argument against the unfairness of the twin-grip style. In his ungrammatically titled Are today's two handed bowler yesterday's dodo bowler? Thompson argues that, like the so-called "dodo" balls that were ingeniously used to advantageous effect by some in the early 1900's until the ABC outlawed them in sanctioned competition in order to standardize the game and make it fairer, the ability of a two-handed bowler to use balls drilled without thumbholes and throw them either right side up or upside down to circumvent ABC limitations regarding side weights and various tournaments' rules limiting the number of balls that can be used in competition, gives him or her an unfair advantage over bowlers who put their thumb in the ball.
I suppose this is an argument worth considering. However, if we accept it, then we'd also have to prohibit even one-handed thumbless bowling or palming, and I don't see that happening. Furthermore, one way to at least partially defeat the argument would be to require even thumbless bowlers to have thumbholes drilled into their balls. They would still be able to effectively turn one ball into two by throwing it with the thumbole above or below the fingers, as I have done to good effect at times when palming my ball, but I personally think this should be allowed. And even this could be prohibited by the governing body of a particular tournament, especially by one that limits the number of balls a participant can use during competition.
So, I really don't think Thompson's argument is very compelling. What do you think, not only about Thompson's argument, but about whether two-handed bowling should be allowed?
