The first 8 games of match play of the U.S. Women's Open were not kind to Shannon Pluhowsky last night. After residing in first or second place throughout most of the qualifying rounds, Pluhowsky went a disastrous 1-7 and averaged only 210 in match play to drop like a rock from solid second to shaky seventh place with only 8 games of match play remaining today.
However, while Pluhowsky stumbled, Leanne Barrette-Hulsenberg was busy going 6-2, shooting 300 in her sixth game and 279 in her eighth, and amassing the highest match play total of the field with a 1909 scratch total for a 238 average to rise to third place.
Meanwhile, Kelly Kulick cruised along to a 6-2 record and 231 average for her eight games of match play to increase her imposing lead over the rest of the field.
The ladies will bowl eight games today to determine the field for the stepladder finals. Stay tuned for the results, click here for the details on yesterday's match play round, and check out the video below of yesterday's match play.
At 8 PM Eastern, the top 16 qualifiers of the U.S. Women's Open will take to the lanes for 8 games of round-robin match play tonight, followed by 8 more games tomorrow to decide who makes the historic finals to be held in Cowboy's Stadium Thursday evening and telecast by ESPN2 this Saturday, June 2 at 6 PM Eastern.
After four rounds of qualifying (32 games), Kelly Kulick leads second place Shannon Pluhowsky by 153 pins, followed by Liz Johnson, Shannon O'Keefe, Jodi Woessner and Lynda Barnes (tie), Leanne Barrette-Hulsenberg, Stefanie Nation, Lisanne Breeschoten, Rachel Perez, Tennelle Milligan, Diandra Asbaty, Helen Johnsson, Kristal Wilson, Kim Terrell Kearney, and Mai Jinge Jensen.
This year's USBC Queens winner, Missy Parkin, finished 20th, and Carolyn Dorin Ballard finished 30th. It's interesting to speculate on how these outstanding bowlers might have fared on tougher, tighter lane conditions than the score-a-thon lanes they faced this year, but it looks like Leanne Hulsenberg's husband Gary was right when he told me last Wednesday night that Leanne was primed and ready for the tournament. I would love to see Leanne and Kelly in the televised final match, and, as of right now, that's a real possibility.
Click here for a summary of the fourth and final round of qualifying and the top 32, and check below for video of today's fourth and final round of qualifying. Also don't forget that Bowl.com and ustream will be live streaming tonight's and tomorrow's match play rounds. That is where some of our USBC membership dues go each year, and this hardcore bowling fan thinks it's well worth it.
Left-hander Shannon Pluhowski led the U.S. Women's Open after the second round of qualifying, shooting 268, 204, 277, and 269 for her last four games Sunday to amass a 3872 pinfall total for 16 games. In second place was defending champion Kelly Kulick, followed by Liz Johnson, April Ellis, and Jacqui Reese. Sacramento area bowler Leanne Barrette-Hulsenberg sat in 22nd place.
The bowlers will complete their final round of qualifying today, and the top 32 will advance to match play tomorrow. The scores have been very high, with Del Ballard predicting that it will take somewhere around +550 to make the cut.
Click here for a summary of the bowling and standings after the second round.
Bowling is underway in Texas for the U.S. Women's Open, and a bowler from the Netherlands is leading after the first round. Lisanne Breeschoten averaged almost 250 for her first 8 games. Shannon Pluhowsky sits in second, Shannon O'Keefe in third, Liz Johnson in fifth, defending champion Kelly Kulick in seventh after shooting 1014 for her last 4 games, Lynda Barnes in tenth, and Sacramento favorite Leanne Barrette-Hulsenberg in sixteenth.
The record field of 286 bowlers is divided into three squads, and each squad will bowl 24 games of qualifying, with 8 games each on fresh oil, on intermediate breakdown, and on "the burn" before the field is cut to the top 32 on Tuesday and the top 16 on Wednesday. The finals will take place on Thursday night in Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX and, for some inscrutable reason, be telecast by ESPN2 on Saturday at 6PM Eastern. The winner will receive a record $50,000. Furthermore, if anyone shoots 300 in the title match, she will receive $1 million. I can't imagine the pressure of going into the tenth frame with all strikes, but I hope somebody does it. Unfortunately, those of us who watch the telecast will almost certainly know not only who won the tournament but also whether she shot 300, which kind of takes away the tension.
You can click here for the story and standings of the first round, and you can view yesterday's first round of qualifying action below. Moreover, you can access live streaming of all the qualifying and match play rounds on bowl.com.
All you lefties who complain about your side of the lanes at the USBC Open in Reno should take a look at Shannon Pluhowsky's scores over the weekend. The left-handed female superstar has taken over the all-events lead with a 2,084 built on a 642 series in the team event, a 740 in doubles, and a 701 in singles. She almost certainly won't win all-events with this total, but she may finish pretty high, and she's certainly provided further evidence that women can hold their own with the men and that lefties can score high in Reno.
I've made it very clear on this blog that I love PBA Xtra Frame. In fact, I've made it so clear that if more than a handful of people actually read this blog, I'd deserve to get paid for all the glowing things I've said about Xtra Frame. It's not perfect, mind you. I get annoyed and frustrated when the video and audio keep freezing up on me and I have to close the window and reopen it again and again. But that's a relatively small price to pay for how entertained I am and for what I learn from its coverage that you can't get anywhere else of PBA events.
Take today for instance. I just finished watching the first 8 game block of match play in the Don and Paul Carter Mixed Doubles Open, and I loved every minute of it. Not only was the bowling exciting, but I listened with rapt attention to announcer Mike Jakubowsky and bowling analyst Jeff Mark converse with guests Mark Sabotini, director of PBA lane maintenance; Cassidy Shaub, two-handed lefty exempt player; and PBA Hall-of-Famer and currrent Ebonite representative Del Ballard. Here are some of the highlights of what I heard this morning:
Belmonte-Feldman dominance- Jeff Mark predicted before match play began that the doubles team of Jason Belmonte and Michelle Feldman would annihilate the rest of the field in match play with their tremendous power games, and it looks like he couldn't have been more right. They're almost 300 pins ahead of the second place team after the first block, and i'm guessing that they're going to keep widening their lead in the second block. They are just destroying the pins and the other teams and opening up their margin of error with their overpowering balls. So, it looks like they'll be seeded first on Sunday's telecast, and I'll be delighted to see them up there. I love to watch them both.
Lane maintenance routine- I never gave much thought to what the lane maintenance people do on the PBA tour, but it was interesting to hear the top guy describe a typical tournament day. When he first arrives at a new bowling center, he unloads the oiling machines from the truck, takes them inside, and plugs them in to warm them up. They have to be at at least 70 degrees to work properly. He then programs them according to predetermined specifications, with a USBC representative there to independently confirm and certify that he's doing it properly, then he runs the lanes with the machine, watches the bowlers warm up and then bowl in competition, and then. after a block is completed, he uses some kind of measuring "tapes," in a manner I don't yet understand, to determine if the lanes were oiled properly.
Sabotini says that the PBA is currently using two kinds of oil. It uses lower viscosity Brunswick Connect lane oil on lower friction surfaces and the much thicker Brunswick Authority 22 lane oil or conditioner on higher friction surfaces. This week, the surface friction is low, so they're using the Connect oil distributed in a modified Scorpion pattern. Sabotini says that the lighter oils don't carry down nearly as much as the heavier ones.
Rookie year challenges- Cassidy Shaub says that he came on tour thinking he already knew a lot about bowling, but he got a rude awakening early on in facing the rapidly changing and extremely challenging conditions that PBA players face on tour. He says it's just "mind boggling" how much they know and, indeed, have to know about lane conditions, equipment, and making the adjustments necessary to be competitive. It's really tough on a young rookie like him to undergo such a steep learning curve and to endure the grind of travel and managing tight finances, but he's doing everything he can to improve, including receiving coaching to help him gain better control of his extremely high revving ball. Yet, when asked if he thinks his two-handed style overtaxes his body and is likely to take its toll over time, he replies that he doesn't think it's any more taxing than a powerful one-handed style.
Two...two...two tournaments in one- Jeff Mark says that a tournament like this week's is really two different tournaments in terms of the conditions the bowlers face and the strategies they must employ between qualifying as individuals bowling only with players of their own gender and bowling match play as a mixed gender team against other mixed gender teams. This presents a special challenge to the women who are now bowling on lanes that get broken down a lot faster by the high revving male players than they are in women's only tournaments. But the men are also faced with different conditions, created by the women bowlers, than they're accustomed to.
Walter Ray loves the women- Del Ballard says that Walter Ray Williams is a huge fan of women's bowling, and Jeff Mark reports that when he was a ball rep and worked with Walter Ray a few years ago, Walter would excitedly approach the pro women for autographs and they were stunned and delighted that this bowling superstar of superstars wanted THEIR autograph. Mark says that no matter how well or poorly he and his doubles partner Staphanie Nation (and they're dead last after the first block) fare in this tournament, no one is having more fun during the mixed doubles format than Walter Ray.
Ballard, who has won a big mixed doubles tournament or two, likes mixed doubles too although he isn't "overly fond" of the Baker format. He's also hopeful for women's bowling. He says he's always maintained that if the women want to get paid as much as the men, they need to be able to beat the men and that Kelly Kulick proved during her amazing performance at the TOC than it can be done. He also agrees with Jeff Mark that Shannon Pluhowsky has such a wonderful style and effortlessly powerful delivery that she could probably compete with the male lefties on the men's tour. Mark says she is one of the few bowlers of either gender that he would actually pay to watch bowl. That's how much he thinks of her game. Ballard says that the most physically talented female bowler he's ever seen is Tammy Boomershine. She made it to match play this week and is paired with heavy rolling British star Stuart Williams.
Two-handed ladies- Ballard recounts a recent experience of practicing on a Sunday morning and seeing two ladies in their fifties come in and start throwing the ball two-handed. When he went over to talk with them, they told him that they'd seen Jason Belmonte do it on TV and wanted to try it for themselves. He said they had a great time and that he did too watching them, talking with them, and giving them a few pointers. He said bowling, even competitive bowling, should be about having fun, which is one reason why he takes no issue with the USBC allowing people to drink beverages, including alcoholic ones, down on the lanes this year at the Nationals in Reno.
Quietest shoulder on tour- I'm not sure exactly what he means by this, but Ballard says, "Nobody on tour keeps their [bowling arm] shoulder quieter than Rhino Page," Ballard says he loves this about Page's style and wishes he could teach it to everyone.
IT may not be all that- I've wondered about Vise's new interchangeable thumb system called IT and have even considered getting it for my own equipment, but, despite the ringing endorsements of some of the PBA's finest, I've been wary of the possibility of it breaking or causing me other problems. Well, this morning, Jeff Mark and Del Ballard gave me further pause. They say that the deep pilot hole that must be drilled into the ball in order to use the IT system may inadvertently alter the shape and density of the ball's core, and that this, in turn, could significantly change the ball's "core dynamics" and roll from what it was designed to be.
Bowling is such a complicated sport at its higher levels. But Xtra Frame helps me understand it better.
If you love bowling like I do and you have Xtra Frame, you find your eyes glued to your computer monitor, especially when live match play is in progress. So, it was with great reluctance that I left to attend a party last night with my wife and miss the exciting action that took place in the men's Round of 8 and the women's semifinal match play.
However, I did get home and tune in just in time to see Stafanie Nation finish with nine strikes in a row to defeat Shannon Pluhowsky 259-244 in the seventh and final game of their great match after Pluhowsky began by winning the first three games and appeared to have the match all but locked up. That just goes to reinforce the trite but true saying, "It ain't over till it's over." I try to remember that whenever I'm bowling in competition and my opposition has a big lead. I keep on trying.
I was disappointed that PJ Haggerty lost to Steve Weber in the Round of 16, and I wish Jason Belmonte had made it to the TV finals instead of losing to Sean Rash in the Round of 8, but the men's and women's field for Sunday's ESPN's live telecast looks like a solid one with Sean Rash facing Mike Machuga, and Anthony LaCaze taking on Mike Wolfe in the men's semifinal matches, and Lynda Barnes matching up with Stefanie Nation in the women's final.
I have a few comments about what I observed yesterday watching match play on Xtra Frame.
First of all, I'm very impressed by the way Sean Rash is throwing the ball. He generates so much speed and turnl, but he's controlling it extremely well on the demanding condition they put out this week for the Anthony Memorial. Xtra Frame commentator Jeff Mark said that some people may not like Rash on the lanes where he can act like a bit of a jerk with his super-competitive demeanor and frequent balks on the approach, but he's a very nice guy off the lanes and recently organized and hosted a fundraising "Bowl for Wishes" Super Regional in Wichita Kansas.
Second, Xtra Frame takes questions from viewers while matches are underway, and one viewer wrote in with a question that's often occurred to me: When the oil on the lanes breaks down and the balls hook as much as they have in Dublin, why do bowlers keep moving so deep inside and throwing such big hooks with their relatively aggressive balls instead of switching to far less aggressive equipment and playing farther outside and straighter. "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark replied that as the bowlers keep throwing their oil sapping reactive resin balls and progressively move farther and farther inside as the oil breaks down, they create a V-shaped pattern where just about any kind of ball you throw in that area is going to hook too early and lose too much of its energy to carry well at the pocket if it even hits the pocket, which is hard to do when the ball hooks right off your hand. So the bowlers pretty much have to keep moving inside.
I still don't understand this oil pattern and oil breakdown business as well as I'd like, because I see people like Walter Ray Williams continue to play far to the right of the other bowlers even after the lanes have gotten very dry, and I've seen him score very well doing this, making the Round of 28 this week where he lost to a blistering hot Patrick Allen in six games. I guess guys like Walter Ray tend to play outside the V-shaped oil burnout pattern that the other players create, and he keeps his ball more controllable with his end-over-end roll. But I still wonder if the best way to bowl on really dry lanes is to keep moving inside even as far as having to stand in front of the ball return and take a three step approach and/or loft the ball five or ten feet out onto the lane, or if one wouldn't be better off using some combination of equipment, speed, and release that allows one to stay further outside and play straighter with a more controllable ball reaction.
Jeff Mark also commented that, as a former Ebonite ball rep, he used to work with Walter Ray and try to get him to use equipment with more exotic layouts, but Walter liked to have a "certain look" with his ball and preferred to stick to the simpler, more basic layouts that consistently gave him that look. Given his incredible success, I wonder if simpler isn't generally better than the widespread push to increasing technical complexity in bowling equipment. Or would guys like Walter Ray do even better if they listened to the ball reps and tried more complex combinations of coverstocks and layouts?
Finally, someone asked about the difference between European and American bowlers, and Jeff Mark replied that he thought European bowlers tended to be much more sound in their fundamentals and especially their spare shooting because they grow up on more demanding lane conditions and learn to make their spares and grind it out with solid fundamentals instead of relying as much on power and being as sloppy in their execution and spare shooting as American bowlers even at the professional level tend to do and be.
I thought this was a very interesting observation that supports my belief that bowling centers in this country need to start putting out more difficult conditions , especially for their junior bowlers, and encourage them to become better in their fundamentals. I, for one, would love to see more difficult house shots such as the Red, White, and Blue patterns of the Pepsi tournament that aired last week and, of course, the animal patterns of the PBA Experience leagues. But I can understand why bowling centers would be reluctant to do this. They're afraid they'd lose business to the centers that keep their conditions easy and their scoring inflated.
