One of the great features of PBA Xtra Frame is that you can submit questions via the PBA Facebook page and get them answered almost immediately on the webcasts. Today, during Xtra Frame's coverage of the PBA Senior Northern California Classic, someone asked Jeff Mark and Jason Thomas if any seniors on tour bowl two-handed.
The answer was that no one, except for Walter Ray fiddling with it from time to time, does, probably because the two-handed delivery places too much strain on the lower back to lend itself to use by older bowlers. But, both Mark and Thomas opined that we might start seeing more elite female players using this style.
For, whereas a man using this style gets only a relatively small rev and speed advantage over the more powerful one-handed stylists on tour, an effective two-handed female bowler would have a tremendous power advantage over all but, perhaps, Michelle Feldman. So, if a woman were to start throwing the ball well two-handed, it could entice many other women to adopt the style, and this could have a huge impact on elite women's bowling.
I followed up this question by asking if any seniors on tour bowled with no thumb one-handed. Thomas answered that no one on the senior tour does now but that there's a guy in Southern California approaching seniorhood who might soon make a dent on the tour with his one-handed thumbless style and that Mike Miller, who cashed in the Tournament of Champions this year, would also be a senior soon and could be a thumbless force to be reckoned with.
If I don't beat him to it with my own thumbless style, that is. :-) Or maybe I should further develop my two-handed game.
"I think the hard work I've put in the past couple of months has really paid off. I'm feeling very comfortable being able to make the adjustments I need to make and just bowling very well in general. I'm very encouraged and confident going forward from here."
--Walter Ray Williams Jr.
As I wrote yesterday, Ron Mohr appeared to be well on his way to another senior title and to strengthening his domination of the PBA Senior Tour. But Walter Ray Williams Jr. had other ideas. After finishing second behind Mohr in qualifying, Walter Ray sliced through his match play opponents Mark Williams, John Chapman, and Harry Sullins yesterday like a proverbial knife through warm butter until he met Mohr in the final, one game match of the PBA Senior Mark Roth Allentown Open and demolished him 268-168, prompting PBA Xtra Frame's "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark to say, "He has bowled tremendous today...Watch out in November, because somebody's going to have their hands full with this guy!"
Mohr bowled very well too, finding ways to come from behind and defeat his prior opponents on challenging lane conditions that favored a straighter line to the pocket than he typically plays. But when he struggled to strike in the title match and Walter started off with a flawless eight-bagger before going a little high in the ninth, the final match was never in doubt.
Walter Ray has his game and confidence back, Ron Mohr is still bowling great, and last year's Senior Player of the Year, Wayne Webb, is slated to make his comeback following knee surgery. The rest of the senior season looks like it's shaping up to be a great one. And you can catch it on PBA Xtra Frame.
Click here for yesterday's match play results, and here for the PBA press release on Walter Ray's victory.
"It doesn't get any better. I consider myself extremely blessed. I just miss Linda. I wish I had someone to share it with."
--Ron Mohr
Ron Mohr was a top amateur bowler in the 90's and has excelled on the PBA Senior Tour. He was the Senior Tour's Player of the Year in 2009 and was riding high until his beloved wife Linda had elective knee surgery last June, took acetaminophen to dull her post-surgical pain, and developed irreversible liver damage from which she eventually died in January of this year.
Mohr, 55, left the tour in 2010 and largely stopped bowling altogether until he decided to try his luck on the Senior Tour again this spring. He told himself that he'd see how he did in the first three tournaments of the season, and if he performed poorly, he'd quit the Tour and just bowl league at his home house in Anchorage, Alaska.
However, his fourth place finish in the first tournament, third place finish in the second, and first place finish last week convinced him to remain out on tour, and he'll compete at the next senior stop later this month in Pennsylvania. Once again, he is the #1 ranked player on the Senior Tour, despite the imposing presence of Walter Ray Williams Jr., and he's looking forward to the rest of the season.
You can read more about Ron Mohr's touching and inspiring story here.
Even though Walter Ray Williams Jr. was unable to successfully defend his PBA Senior Miller High Life Classic crown this year, losing to the Steve Licklitter in the Round of 16 and paving the way for Ron Mohr to win the championship, I would have liked to see him try on the PBA's live and archived webcast service Xtra Frame. Unfortunately, they didn't cover the tournament.
They had covered the previous two senior tournaments, but they didn't cover this one. Why not? Because their viewership for the previous two tournaments was too low to justify it. As someone in the know confided to me, "Only 20 subscribers watched the live content of the Senior Don Carter Open, and only about 250 watched any of it on demand. I can't sell that to a sponsor, and our Xtra Frame production budget only stretches only so far."
I'm surprised and sad to learn this. I would think that the hardcore bowling fans who subscribe to Xtra Frame would be very interested in watching the senior action, especially with guys as good as Walter Ray, Ron Mohr, Tom Baker, Harry Sullins, Hugh Miller, George Pappas, and Mark Williams competing.
So why didn't they watch? Sure, I can understand how a lot of people might not have been able to watch the morning and afternoon sessions live. But why didn't more people watch them later on demand?
Professional bowling has a serious problem. Part of it is a lack of interest even on the part of its biggest fans. This certainly doesn't bode well for the PBA's future.
Nevertheless, Xtra Frame is scheduled to cover four PBA events during the rest of May and June. Three of them are senior events, including the Senior U.S. Open, and one is a regional event. I hope all you Xtra Frame subscribers will be tuning in and that those of you who don't yet subscribe will sign up and start enjoying the action.
The season doesn't end when the regular tour goes on hiatus. There's a lot that still goes on, and the more interest you show in seeing it, the more of it will be made available to us all.
And remember that it isn't only the bowling action itself that makes Xtra Frame so valuable. It's also the comprehensive and incisive commentary that accompanies it. It's a treasure trove of detailed information about bowling balls, lane conditions, styles, techniques, and strategies delivered by bowling leaders and legends and top coaches. It's the true bowling enthusiast's dream service, and it delivers tremendous bang for the buck.
Last week, I posted about Walter Ray Williams Jr. seeking to defend his PBA Senior Miller High Life Classic title. He led both qualifying rounds and was seeded first going into match play. Because of his seeding, he was able to sit out the Round of 32 and the Round of 24 and was matched against the #16 seed, Steve Licklitter, in the Round of 16. Walter Ray lost three games out of four in the best-of-five match and Licklitter went on to lose in the Round of 8. Ron Mohr won the championship.
This reinforces what I wrote previously about how the bowlers on the PBA Senior Tour are a lot tougher than you might think and that even someone as good and accomplished as Walter Ray on the regular tour cannot expect to waltz in and dominate every event of the senior tour. Not only is the senior competition too good for that, but also the "softer" conditions and the match play format that follows qualifying makes it easy for the best bowlers to be eliminated by a momentary cold streak in themselves or by an opponent's hot hand or good fortune in match play.
Having said this, Ron Mohr, who won the championship, has done extremely well since coming out on the senior tour. He was the 2009 PBA Senior Player of the Year, started out strong in 2010 before losing his wife to surgical complications and sitting out the latter half of the season, and now he's come roaring back to place high in every tournament and win his fourth senior title. He is a force to be reckoned with on the senior tour and seems poised to give Walter Ray all he can handle.
I wrote the other day about how Walter Ray Williams Jr. has bowled well on the PBA Senior Tour but hasn't been as dominant as many might have expected due to the quality of his competition. Well, maybe he read my post and decided to prove me wrong, because he tore up the first qualifying round of the PBA Senior Miller High Life Classic at the George Pappas Victory Lanes in Mooresville, N.C. yesterday by averaging a blistering 253 for eight games. He is the defending champion, having won the tournament last year in his first outing on the Senior Tour after winning Player of the Year on the regular Tour.
Walter Ray had this to say about his opening round:
"I was a little concerned at the start of the round because I wasn’t getting the ball reaction I wanted but somehow I was still getting the ball to the pocket. Eventually I got everything synched up where my timing, equipment and ball reaction all came together. I’m feeling good and after some work I like where my game is now. I’m getting back to where I was, so everything’s heading in the right direction."
It sounds to me as though Walter Ray's opponents may be in for a rough season.
"I have basically felt that most of my struggles this year were related to me. I think I started doing some things that weren't quite right so I have been working on improving my timing and push away to create a better swing. With the changes I have had to make to my game hopefully I can improve upon what I'm working on and have a successful Senior Tour season."
When Walter Ray Williams Jr. went out on the Senior Tour last season after leading the regular Tour in all the major statistical categories and earning his record-setting seventh PBA Tour Player of the Year award at age 50, a lot of people were predicting that he'd tear up the Senior Tour. "If guys like Tom Baker, who haven't been a presence on the regular Tour for over a decade, are doing very well on the Senior Tour and Walter Ray is still more than holding his own with the youngsters, what chance do the other seniors have against his awesome game?" was what a lot of people, including Xtra Frame's Jeff Mark, were thinking.
Well, it turns out that one thing that's stopped Walter Ray from dominating his fellow seniors as totally as people predicted is the quality of his competition on the Senior Tour. There are a lot of guys out there who can flat out bowl. And yesterday, Harry "The Legend" Sullins was one of them, defeating Walter Ray in the title match of the PBA Senior Sun Bowl in The Villages, Florida 248-239 after Walter Ray destroyed 2008-2009 Senior Bowler of the Year Ron Mohr in the semifinal match 270-199. This was the second time Sullins defeated Walter Ray in a PBA title match. The first time was 25 years ago in 1986 when Sullins beat Walter Ray for a regular Tour title. Walter Ray went on to win his first Player of the Year award that year.
None of this is to say that Walter Ray hasn't prospered on the Senior Tour. He won the very first tournament he entered, was last season's Rookie of the Year, made the semifinals of the first Senior Tour tournament of this season last week before losing the final match yesterday, is leading in average after two tournaments this season by a whopping margin, and seems to be a virtual cinch to make match play and cash high in every tournament he enters. And, if the truth be told, he probably outbowled Sullins in the title match yesterday but just couldn't carry as well as his opponent.
Still, he's won, by my count, only one of the several senior tournaments he's entered over two seasons, and he's likely to face stiff competition from the likes of Ron Mohr, Tom Baker, last year's Player of the Year Wayne Webb (when he recovers from knee surgery), Johnny Petraglia, Mark Williams, Harry Sullins, and Steve Ferraro in every tournament he enters.
The PBA Senior Tour may be for "old" guys, but those "old" guys can still bowl. And for those of you who miss the action of the regular Tour while it's on hiatus, you can subscribe to PBA Xtra Frame and watch the Senior Tour action live along with listening to expert commentary from the likes of "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark and a panoply of bowling greats.
You can read more about yesterday's action in the PBA Senior Sun Bowl here. Below is video of a 1991 regular Tour match between Walter Ray Williams Jr. and Harry Sullins.
I'm back from something of a blogging hiatus, and today's entry is chock full of recent bowling news.
~ Pennsylvania bowler rolls 47 consecutive strikes -- "Tommy Gollick of Oberlin, Pa., set a United States Bowling Congress national record by rolling 47 consecutive strikes during league play at the Red Crown Bowling Center in Harrisburg, Pa., on May 11, pending the submission of certification paperwork. Gollick didn't exactly get off to a great start during his Tuesday night scratch league with a 4-10 split and open first frame. But the split did not foretell what would turn out to be a record-setting evening. After knocking down the 4 pin for a 9-count in the opening frame, Gollick struck out for a 279 game and then proceeded to throw three consecutive 300 games to finish the four-game set with a total pinfall of 1,179..."
~ Ohio bowler shoots 300 and 811 at USBC Open Championships -- "Earon Vollmar (pictured left) of Toledo, Ohio, got off to a rough start in singles at the 2010 USBC Open Championships, failing to mark in two of his first three frames. The 21-year-old right-hander decided to make a ball change, and everything fell into place. He rattled off a near-record 28 consecutive strikes on the way to games of 247, 300 and 264 for an 811 series, which is tied for second place in Regular Singles. Terrence Syring (right) of Bay City, Mich., leads with 833..."
~ Former champions challenge lead at USBC Open Championships -- "Five years ago, KR Strikeforce of Decatur, Ill., conquered a very demanding lane condition and outdistanced its nearest competitor by 119 pins to take home the Regular Team title at the United States Bowling Congress Open Championships. With success comes added pressure, and one of the team's main goals since winning has been to prove that the victory wasn't just a fluke. The group has only cracked the top 100 one time since winning, but nearly reclaimed the top spot at the National Bowling Stadium on Wednesday night..."
~ PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Mike Scroggins -- "The player who impressed me the most out on Tour this past season was Mike Scroggins. Although he doesn't throw the big power ball like Jason Belmonte or Tommy Jones, have the ability to throw the ball a gazillion different ways like Chris Barnes or possess an uncanny nose for the winner's circle like Walter Ray Williams Jr., the things Mike Scroggins does with the talent he has is a testament to what you can achieve by setting goals, believing in yourself and working hard..."
~ PBA Senior Tour Starts Western Swing May 30-June 2 With Northern California Classic -- "The Professional Bowlers Association Senior Tour resumes action May 30 with a stop in Northern California followed by two Senior majors—the Senior U.S. Open presented by the Suncoast and the United States Bowling Congress Senior Masters—both to be conducted in Las Vegas. Reigning PBA Player of the Year and Hall of Famer Walter Ray Williams Jr. and defending champion Dale Traber head a list of more than 100 players scheduled to compete in the Senior Northern California Classic at Harvest Park Bowl in Brentwood May 30-June 2...PBA Hall of Famer Wayne Webb will try for an unprecedented third consecutive Senior U.S. Open title when the event returns to the Suncoast Bowling Center June 6-11. Webb, who recently moved to Columbus, Ohio, won the Senior Columbus Open in his new hometown April 27 for his third Senior Tour title...The Senior Tour will move to South Point Bowling Center in Las Vegas for the Senior Masters June 13-18 where Traber will try to defend his Senior Masters title...PBA.com’s Xtra Frame video service will provide coverage of the Senior U.S. Open and Senior Masters. Click on http://xtraframe.pba.com/Info.aspx to subscribe to Xtra Frame to catch all the action..."
~ The 11th Frame: Jaros wins 43rd PBA Regional Title -- "Steve Jaros won his 43rd PBA Regional title over the weekend, pulling him within one of the all-time PBA record. Jaros, who earned $2,500, beat Anthony LaCaze in the title match of the Illinois Valley Classic in Peru, Ill. LaCaze won $1,300. The event, which was contested on the Shark pattern, was "old school" with qualifying, 16 games of round robin match play and a stepladder finals..."
~ PBA Hall of Famer Andy Marzich Dies at 74 -- "PBA Hall of Famer Andy Marzich of Torrance, Calif., died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 74. Inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame in 1990, Marzich was a six-time PBA Tour titlist who won all six of his titles between 1962 and ’64 with three titles coming in 1963 and two in 1964..."
~ Donnie Layman: Andrew Koff's Rising Star -- "As many of you have already read, 18 year-old Andrew Koff of Miami won the Southern Region Jupiter Open this weekend. If you haven't seen this young man bowl yet, you're truly missing out on a potential legend in the making (yet another reason to subscribe to Xtra Frame). Being a South Floridian myself, I had heard his name making the circles as the "next big thing" in bowling in our area. At that time I had never seen him bowl in person, but had been told that there were a few videos from a couple of JBT stops in which he had made the finals. After doing some Google searches I came across the videos, and though at the time he was all of 13 his game sure didn't reflect it. He was playing angles on the lane that most kids that age haven't dared to attempt or been coached to "see", and he was doing it with accuracy and consistency. To say I was impressed by the video would be an understatement to say the least...This kid has the potential of becoming one of the all time greats in our game if he continues to pursue it..."
~ Mika Koivuniemi regains lead in European Bowling Tour rankings -- "With the victory in the 7th Istanbul Open, his second win on the European Bowling Tour this season and the fourth of his career, Mika Koivuniemi, Finland, regained the lead in the men's ranking..."
~ Mika Koivuniemi shoots big games to win the 7th Instanbul Open -- "8-time PBA champion and PBA Player of the Year 2003-04, Mika Koivuniemi (pictured left), Finland, posted some big games en route to win his second European Bowling Tour title of the 2010 season in the 7th Istanbul Open Sunday at Timeout Bowling Center in Istanbul, Turkey. In the title match, Koivuniemi fired games of 258 and 290 to fly past Mykhaylo Kalika, Ukraine, 548-424, and to pocket the 10.000 Euro top prize..."
"Come on, Walter Ray. is that really fair? You're still killin' it on the tour against the young guns. Now you want to make it almost impossible for the Seniors to win a title for some of which the Senior Tour may be the only way to do that?" --Brad Heyden, Facebook comment
As of this writing, Walter Ray is in 11th place in the PBA Senior Miller High Life Classic after 8 games of qualifying. So he isn't running away and hiding from the field yet, although he's certainly hanging in the thick of the competition.
Still, he's only human, even if he often seems more than that, and those other guys on the Senior Tour aren't slouches. But even so, if Walter does dominate the senior events he enters, the way almost everyone including Xtra Frame's "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark seems to think he will, should he be out there depriving the other guys of the only chances some of them may ever have to win senior titles and make it to the TOC, not to mention take away from them the meager-enough-as-it-is money they might otherwise be able to win?
