Yesterday, I posted video of the 2009 GEICO Plastic Ball Championship finals. I'd like to follow that up today with video of most of last year's thrilling TV finals of the 2010 GEICO Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship. By the way, you can click here to read my commentary on last year's tournament, which I think may have been one of the most entertaining in the entire history of the PBA.
Tomorrow at 1 PM EST, ESPN will air the 2011 Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship, and, like last year, Mark Roth himself will be sitting in the front row behind the bowlers to take in the tournament held in his honor.
Since no left-handers made the televised finals of the first two plastic ball tournaments, perhaps it's only fitting that three out of the top four finalists for tomorrow and eight out of the top sixteen are lefties, with slow-hooking Tom Smallwood being the only righty to make it to the show.
However, to my way of thinking, it would be more "fitting" still if the lanes for every PBA national tournament favored neither lefties nor righties, although I'm not sure how that could be achieved.
Bowling may not be all that popular on television, but it seems to be attracting a growing audience on the Internet, thanks in no small part to PBA Xtra Frame and Bowl.com's live streaming of bowling events. These two services offered an embarrassment of bowling riches all day yesterday.
The day began on something of a sour note with local, Sacramento area favorite Leanne Barrette Hulsenberg losing two consecutive bracket matches to exit from the USBC Queens tournament after bowling spectacularly well the day before. But it was still great seeing her back in the thick of competition against the best of the best and doing as well as she did with what I suspect was a minimal amount of practice and preparation for the big event.
Still, there was some great bowling to be seen from the likes of Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, Tennelle Milligan, Anne Marie Duggan, and a host of other ladies in the stellar field before the pin dust settled and the five finalists for tonight's televised stepladder finals (ESPN2, 8 PM EDT) were determined. Tonight's finalists will be 1. Tennelle Milligan, 2. Anne Marie Dugan, 3. Missy Bellinder, 4. Kelly Kulick, and 5. Michelle Feldman.
I wasn't familiar with Tennelle Milligan before watching her closely yesterday. But now I'm very impressed with her game. She has one of the best women's styles, she had a great ball reaction yesterday, even shooting 300 at one point, and I think she's going to be very tough to beat tonight. If you missed yesterday's action, you can catch it in the USTREAM archives.
But the USBC Queens was not the only bowling well worth watching yesterday. There was also Xtra Frame's live coverage of match play and final rounds of the PBA Senior Columbus Open. It was great hearing Mark Roth doing commentary with Charlie Tapp and Jeff Mark in the Xtra Frame booth and seeing Hall of Famers Dave Soutar and Wayne Webb bowl each other in one of the semifinal matches. Soutar is 70 years old, has been bowling regularly in PBA events for 50 years, and is still good enough to almost make it to the title match of a PBA senior event.
I remember when he came to San Mateo, California in the early 1970's to put on a bowling exhibition at 19th Avenue Bowl. I lived just a few blocks away and Soutar was my favorite bowler at the time. So I went to watch him and even got to bowl on the pair next to him with some friends of mine, which was a big thrill. It was an even bigger thrill watching my grandfather throw a straight ball off the corner to beat him with a 289 game in an exhibition match and to see Soutar follow up his defeat with a 300 the next game. However, as well as he bowled yesterday, he didn't shoot 300 and lost to Webb 212-258 in a semifinal match.
I was very happy to see Wayne Webb finish with seven in a row in an exciting final match against Mark Williams to win 264-253 and take his third senior title. Wayne is bowling really well right now on the senior tour, and he looks a whole lot happier than he did in A League of Ordinary Gentlemen. He successfully defended his Senior U.S. Open title this year and came in second to Steve Ferraro in a senior tour event last week. It's almost a pity he won't be able to bowl that much now that he's just bought a bowling center in Columbus, Ohio and will have to devote most of his time to it. But I wish him the very best with his bowling and his bowling center. And if you missed his semifinal and final matches yesterday, you can catch them here and here on PBA Xtra Frame.
One of the great things about last week's GEICO Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship was that many of us got to see Brian Ziesig for the first time. Being from the West coast, I'd never even heard of the guy, although he was apparently widely known and respected on the East coast and had even been a touring pro for a time.
However, it took awhile for me to notice him last week. When I first caught glimpses on Xtra Frame of him bowling match play, I wasn't particularly impressed with his strange style and slow-balling it down the lane, especially with dazzlers like Belmo around him. To be honest, I wondered what a rather ordinary if not peculiar looking bowler like him was doing in a tournament like that, not to mention scoring well enough to be in match play with a field of superstars.
When he and Belmonte ended up battling it out for top seed, I was REALLY surprised. Yet, it was also beginning to dawn on me that appearances can be deceiving and that this Ziesig fellow must be pretty darn good to be where he was, because sheer luck seldom if ever enables one to execute the kinds of pressure shots and fly as high in the standings as Ziesig was toward the end of match play.
Still, when Sunday's telecast began, I was rooting for Walter Ray all the way. I'll always be for Walter first. He's my favorite bowler of all time. Yet, when Ziesig won, I didn't feel the huge letdown I normally do when my favorite bowler loses. There was something about Ziesig that was winning me over. Not only could the guy obviously flat out bowl despite his peculiar looking style, but he seemed so genuine, so cool under the lights and the enormous pressure, so gracious to his competitors, so thankful to be where he was and to be enjoying his self-described "15 minutes of fame," and, ultimately, so thoroughly good-natured and just plain nice that I was really starting to like the guy.
Still, now that Jason Belmonte has become my second favorite bowler on earth, I wanted Belmo to beat Brian. Yet, by the time that incredibly exciting and suspenseful match was over and even though I felt bad for Belmonte for losing the way he did, I felt very happy for Brian Ziesig. He had earned his victory, and he embraced it with uncommon grace. He was, as many have subsequently said, "a class act."
He continued his classiness yesterday by graciously posting these beautiful words of gratitude to the PBA Forum:
I just wanted to be able to take this time to say thank you to a whole lot of people after one of the greatest weeks of my life.
Thanks to Kelly Sullivan, Lisa Baron, and the rest of my "fan club" for making those shirts, posters, and signs everyone saw on the show this past week.
Thanks to the great staff at AMF Babylon Lanes, GM Mike Serigano, Snack Counter manager Laura Kase, the mechanics Steve, Glen, Dave, etc. and everyone else on Mike's staff that made the event run so well.
Thanks to all of the fans who were there the whole week supporting me, and especially the atmosphere on the show. It really was an incredible scene to be a part of.
Thanks to Chuck Gardner, Tony Mendiola, and Brian Bever from KR/Brunswick/On The Ball.
Thanks to Joe Farley, Del Ballard and Eddie Gallagher at Ebonite for all their help past and present.
Thanks to Mike Luongo and Doene Moos from Storm.
Thanks to my boss Peter Hakim, the 1986 LI Open champ for all of his good advice during the week. And to Jason Couch, whose advice the morning of the show was about as perfect a description as you could get.
Thanks to the rest of the Ace Mitchell Staff here on LI, and in Ohio, especially Dave Grau for giving me the time off, and Jeff Mraz for his words of encouragement.
Thanks to Tom Clark for coming up with the idea for a "retro" plastic ball event. This tournament was a HUGE advantage for me. While the exempt players were bowling their standard events with "regular" equipment, I was able to put about a month's worth of practice in with plastic in order to get the feel of the fingers and hitting up on the shot as opposed to getting it off my hand "clean". The Exempt players are better at adjustments than me, better at equipment selection than me, and better at getting the ball off their hand clean than me...so with all of these factors minimalized, along with the high scores, it allowed me to compete at a higher level than even I thought possible.
Thanks to all of the PBA players who competed this week. They all made me feel like an equal, even though I am now considered an "amateur". Special thanks to Walter Ray and to Jason Belmonte for being completely gracious and genuinely happy for me on my win, even though it was pretty obvious which way the breaks went.
Thanks to Randy Pedersen and Rob Stone for keeping me loose throughout the show, and for their kind words during the broadcast for me and my family...I will never forget it.
And last but certainly not least, thank you to my wife Christine, my daughter Kirsten, my mother Mary, my brothers Christopher and Stephen, my sister-in-law Marie, and my late father Robert who I am sure had a lot to do with exactly how that roll-off went. The only regret is that he couldn't have been there to see it in person, but I know he was with me in spirit.
Brian Ziesig
P.S. See the dots in my post??? That is what cloud 9 still looks like to me.
There was an outpouring of warm responses to Ziesig's glowing message, including a congratulatory one by Mike Scroggins and one from yours truly.
So, while it's probably true that many of us had never heard of Brian Ziesig before last week's tournament and that, going in to it, many of us probably wanted everyone else on the telecast to win ahead of him, I personally am now delighted that he won, and I'm now a big fan of his bowling and, even more importantly, of his exemplary character.
