--Jeff, commenting on Lyle Zikes' Bowlers Journal article "Will Kulick Attract New Fans, Sponsors?"
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Bowling Quote of the Day--3/10/10
"I’m amazed at all of the hopeful commentary on Kulick’s win. I’ve been reading optimistic thoughts on the state of bowling for going on 30 years now. It’s time to face facts: regardless of Walter Ray, Kelly, etc., bowling is in a death spiral. Give it up."
--Jeff, commenting on Lyle Zikes' Bowlers Journal article "Will Kulick Attract New Fans, Sponsors?"
--Jeff, commenting on Lyle Zikes' Bowlers Journal article "Will Kulick Attract New Fans, Sponsors?"
USBC Open Sees Its First 300 Game
If you had feverish fantasies of bowling the first perfect game in this year's USBC Open, you can forget it. Barry Zimmerman of Grand Forks, ND beat you to it. He followed it up with 236 and 230 to take the current lead in Regular Singles with a 766 series.
Interestingly, Zimmerman didn't even use his own ball to accomplish his feat. He used a teammate's ball because he could control it better on his pair than he could his own equipment. Lucky for him that he had a teammate whose equipment fits him well and worked well on the pair. You can read more about this story here.
You can no longer be the first to shoot 300 at the Nationals, but if you hurry, you just might be the first to shoot 800. So, hop to it.
Interestingly, Zimmerman didn't even use his own ball to accomplish his feat. He used a teammate's ball because he could control it better on his pair than he could his own equipment. Lucky for him that he had a teammate whose equipment fits him well and worked well on the pair. You can read more about this story here.
You can no longer be the first to shoot 300 at the Nationals, but if you hurry, you just might be the first to shoot 800. So, hop to it.
Dorin-Ballard and Bohn Near Top in Brunswick Euro Challenge
It looks like the American men and women pros have reached the Le Plaza Bowling center outside Paris and are beginning to make their mark on the Brunswick Euro Challenge of which I wrote yesterday. Carolyn Dorin-Ballard is in fourth, Parker Bohn in fifth, Bill O'Neill in sixth, and defending champion Mike Fagan is in 29th place out of the 220 men and women from all over the world who have bowled as of this posting.
You can read more about the tournament and check out the current standings here. There are more squads yet to bowl, and I'm guessing that there will be more PBA and American women stars among them. It will be interesting to see how they do against the best from the rest of the world. Live video coverage is supposed to commence tomorrow.
Judging from what I've been reading on the Web, it sounds to me like Europe, Asia, and the Middle East may be the future of professional bowling if the PBA continues its increasingly apparent descent into oblivion. I'll have more to say about this later. But can you imagine Walter Ray, PDW, Chris Barnes, Wes Malott, Bill O'Neill, and all the other PBA stars pulling up stakes and moving to Europe? They may have to someday, unless they want to take up another line of work.
You can read more about the tournament and check out the current standings here. There are more squads yet to bowl, and I'm guessing that there will be more PBA and American women stars among them. It will be interesting to see how they do against the best from the rest of the world. Live video coverage is supposed to commence tomorrow.
Judging from what I've been reading on the Web, it sounds to me like Europe, Asia, and the Middle East may be the future of professional bowling if the PBA continues its increasingly apparent descent into oblivion. I'll have more to say about this later. But can you imagine Walter Ray, PDW, Chris Barnes, Wes Malott, Bill O'Neill, and all the other PBA stars pulling up stakes and moving to Europe? They may have to someday, unless they want to take up another line of work.
Bowling's Tournament Twilight Zone
As I spend more time thinking and writing about bowling, the more serious I'm becoming about my game, and the more I want to start bowling in tournaments. When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I bowled in quite a few tournaments, mostly eight or ten gamers. I loved the long format, because I tend to do better the longer I bowl. I guess you could call me bowling's equivalent of a "marathon man."
But I don't see nearly as many tournament opportunities in the Sacramento area as I used to have in the Bay Area. Oh, there are a fair number of tournaments, but most of them are either high caliber scratch tournaments dominated by local pros and elite amateurs, or they're handicap tournaments, often only three games long, dominated by lower average bowlers, often sandbaggers, with huge handicaps.
Thus, so far as bowling in tournaments in which I can be competitive and have a chance to cash is concerned, I inhabit a kind of twilight zone. My average is too high to get appreciable or any handicap, and I'm not skilled enough to go head-to-head with the big and mostly much younger guns in this area. So, what's a poor old geezer like me to do?
Well, one possibility that's come to my attention is to join a local bowling club that tries to make things fair for all its members by invoking an elaborate and flexible handicapping system that takes as accurate a measure as possible of a bowler's ability to perform on its tournament conditions. And those conditions are said to be sport patterns.
Clearly, if I want to competitive on those conditions against people using averages to determine their handicap that come from their performance on those conditions, I can't use my highest regular league average as the basis for determining my handicap. I would have to come in with a 220 average obtained on an easy house shot and would have no chance against people with handicaps derived from 190 or 200 averages bowled on tournament sport conditions. This club's rules say that you have to use your highest league average for the first 21 games before your average is adjusted, but the director told me that the adjustment can happen much sooner.
I'm probably going to join this organization and see how it goes. They have tournaments almost every week from the looks of their schedule. But I wish there were more good tournaments around for people like myself--senior bowlers with high house averages but who are not able to compete with the best professional and amateur bowlers in the area.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Brunswick Euro Challenge This Week
As much as we in the USA tend to focus on the PBA Tour, there's a lot of great bowling going on in the world outside the PBA and the USA. A lot of it takes place in Europe.
For instance, there's a European Bowling Tour (EBT) and a big EBT tournament happening right now at the Brunswick Euro Challenge in a bowling center near Paris. Since there's no PBA Tour tournament this week, some PBA stars will be participating in this tournament along with hundreds of top bowlers from Europe and elsewhere.
Mike Fagan, who has made it to the final match of this tournament the past two years, beat Brian Voss for the championship last year. You can watch a high quality video of that match by clicking on here.
You may also want to view Fagan's semifinal match with a top female bowler (yes, they let the women bowl against the men in Europe too) from Denmark named Mai Genge Jensen by clicking on here.
I even got a big and pleasant surprise when, as I was looking over the current standings in the Brunswick Euro Challenge, my eye caught the name of a guy I used to bowl with in the Bay Area that I hadn't seen or heard from or about for over 20 years. I wrote to him on Facebook and told him not to be intimidated by the big, bad PBA stars coming over the pond this week.
I want to start paying more attention to bowling in the rest of the world, especially now that the PBA Tour is on hiatus this week and is winding down its season. Stay tuned for further coverage of the Euro Challenge and EBT.
For instance, there's a European Bowling Tour (EBT) and a big EBT tournament happening right now at the Brunswick Euro Challenge in a bowling center near Paris. Since there's no PBA Tour tournament this week, some PBA stars will be participating in this tournament along with hundreds of top bowlers from Europe and elsewhere.
Mike Fagan, who has made it to the final match of this tournament the past two years, beat Brian Voss for the championship last year. You can watch a high quality video of that match by clicking on here.
You may also want to view Fagan's semifinal match with a top female bowler (yes, they let the women bowl against the men in Europe too) from Denmark named Mai Genge Jensen by clicking on here.
I even got a big and pleasant surprise when, as I was looking over the current standings in the Brunswick Euro Challenge, my eye caught the name of a guy I used to bowl with in the Bay Area that I hadn't seen or heard from or about for over 20 years. I wrote to him on Facebook and told him not to be intimidated by the big, bad PBA stars coming over the pond this week.
I want to start paying more attention to bowling in the rest of the world, especially now that the PBA Tour is on hiatus this week and is winding down its season. Stay tuned for further coverage of the Euro Challenge and EBT.
How to Prepare for the Nationals
I've never bowled the USBC Open, aka Nationals, but if I were to do it, I think I'd like to approach it the way Richard Eisenhut of Downers Grove, Illinois did this year. Eisenhut has taken the early lead in the Classified All-Events category with a 600 series in doubles, 587 in singles, and 579 in team for a 1766 total. This is much better than he's ever done before, and, even though he doesn't expect his score to hold up as the top score, he's very pleased with his results.
How did he do it? He prepared for the tournament with the help of Bronze Level coach and former Open champion Gregg Zicha. He worked on improving his execution, strategy, and ball selection, and he practiced on conditions similar to those at the Open. "We put out the shot and talked about where to play and what moves to make," explains Eisenhut.
I don't think the USBC releases precise details about the oil pattern they use at the Nationals, and, even if they did, it's surely not possible to simulate the conditions perfectly in another bowling center with a different surface on its lanes and other differences. Nevertheless, a skilled coach could probably gain a pretty good idea of what the pattern is, have it put out on a practice pair at a local center, and help you learn to play that pattern better than you'd know how to play it without the assistance.
This seems like a pretty good way to go, kind of like practicing with expert coaching for the SAT or GRE before taking it for real.
If you'd like to read more about this story, click on here.
How did he do it? He prepared for the tournament with the help of Bronze Level coach and former Open champion Gregg Zicha. He worked on improving his execution, strategy, and ball selection, and he practiced on conditions similar to those at the Open. "We put out the shot and talked about where to play and what moves to make," explains Eisenhut.
I don't think the USBC releases precise details about the oil pattern they use at the Nationals, and, even if they did, it's surely not possible to simulate the conditions perfectly in another bowling center with a different surface on its lanes and other differences. Nevertheless, a skilled coach could probably gain a pretty good idea of what the pattern is, have it put out on a practice pair at a local center, and help you learn to play that pattern better than you'd know how to play it without the assistance.
This seems like a pretty good way to go, kind of like practicing with expert coaching for the SAT or GRE before taking it for real.
If you'd like to read more about this story, click on here.
How Can We Make PBA Telecasts More Successful?
I'm having second thoughts about something I posted at the end of my entry yesterday. I wrote: "In my next post, I have a proposal to make about how the majority of televised finals might best be conducted in the future." After giving it more thought, I'm not sure my idea is such a good one. But I want to throw it out here anyway. Maybe you can tweak it or come up with a better idea for making the PBA telecasts draw a larger viewing audience without compromising the integrity of bowling or the PBA.
First of all, let me explain that I personally like the old five person stepladder format the best. That is, the top five finishers after round-robin match play advance to the TV finals, #5 bowls #4 in the first match, the winner bowls #3, and so forth. However, it seems that we're now limited to seeing three matches rather than four and that ESPN and/or the PBA doesn't want to use the stepladder format all the time.
So what exciting alternatives might there be? I have to admit that I enjoyed yesterday's eliminator format in which the first match featured all four contestants bowling a game, with the low man going out after the first match, the low man of the remaining three bowlers being eliminated after the second match, and the last two bowlers vying for the title in the third and final match.
I liked the fact that all the bowlers were competing on the same set of conditions at the same time instead of some having to sit out of the competition while others competed and broke down the lanes in unpredictable ways. I think this was a truer test of ALL the bowlers' ability to deal with the lane conditions throughout the telecast. And it seemed to me that having all four compete at the outset and the remaining three compete in the second match made things a little faster-paced and more exciting for the typical viewer than a series of traditional one-on-one matches would be.
However, I'm still partial to round-robin match play for determining who makes it into the telecasts. This allows more bowlers to remain in the competition for a longer time and to either fade toward the end or figure things out and come on strong after a weak start to move way up in the standings or even make the telecast. It also rewards bowlers for being consistently good throughout match play. In other words, it encourages bowlers to keep bowling their best at all times instead of compiling big leads in "eliminator" matches and then coasting the rest of the way, or getting down in a match and giving up because they know they're going to be eliminated after one three-game match instead of being able to rebound from it in later matches.
But round-robin match play should produce rankings or seedings going into a telecast. That is, there's a bowler with the highest pinfall after match play, second highest pinfall, and so on down to fourth place. So how do you combine an eliminator format with one that ranks and rewards bowlers according to how many pins they knocked down in match play? Obviously, if you just throw everybody into the televised matches and don't give the higher ranked or seeded bowlers some kind of advantage for having knocked down more pins in match play than the lower seeded bowlers, the highest seeded bowler could be eliminated after the first match, and that wouldn't be fair. So, how do you make things fair?
Well, I'm not sure you could make them completely fair, but one possibility would be to handicap bowlers by rank. The first seeded bowler could have, say, 20 pins added to his score, second seed 10 pins, third seed five pins, and fourth seed zero pins. This way the bowlers get rewarded or punished for how they did in match play and are encouraged to do their very best throughout match play. Furthermore, I would add one other element to the mix.
I believe that PBA Tour championships should be decided by more than just one game. I think if you really want to know who the best bowler is on a particular Sunday or, at least, who bowled best that day, you should use more than one game to determine it. For instance, Chris Barnes lost a couple of major tournaments recently to opponents--Kelly Kulick and Walter Ray Williams--who bowled blockbuster single games against him in the title match. But suppose Barnes had more of a chance to utilize his superior skills to make adjustments and overcome those single big games shot against him the way he did against Wes Malott in the Masters where he bowled 300 in the final game to overcome a 40+ point deficit after two games? That was tremendously exciting, and it showcased Barnes' ability to make adjustments.
Why not take the remaining two bowlers in a televised eliminator format and use their three game total pinfall to determine who wins the title? So, for example, in yesterday's case, the bowler with the highest three game series between Mark Scroggings and Brian Kretzer would have won the championship. This would have encouraged both players to bowl their best all three games, and it would have been a truer test of who bowled best that day than any one game can provide.
I know this sounds a little complicated. But it has the virtues of round-robin match play, rewarding TV finalists according to their overall performance during match play, making the TV finals more exciting to the typical viewer, allowing or forcing all the players to deal with the same conditions, and being the truest test of who bowled best that day.
What do you think of my proposal? If you don't like it, do you have any better ideas for making the telecasts more popular with fans while still fair to the players?
First of all, let me explain that I personally like the old five person stepladder format the best. That is, the top five finishers after round-robin match play advance to the TV finals, #5 bowls #4 in the first match, the winner bowls #3, and so forth. However, it seems that we're now limited to seeing three matches rather than four and that ESPN and/or the PBA doesn't want to use the stepladder format all the time.
So what exciting alternatives might there be? I have to admit that I enjoyed yesterday's eliminator format in which the first match featured all four contestants bowling a game, with the low man going out after the first match, the low man of the remaining three bowlers being eliminated after the second match, and the last two bowlers vying for the title in the third and final match.
I liked the fact that all the bowlers were competing on the same set of conditions at the same time instead of some having to sit out of the competition while others competed and broke down the lanes in unpredictable ways. I think this was a truer test of ALL the bowlers' ability to deal with the lane conditions throughout the telecast. And it seemed to me that having all four compete at the outset and the remaining three compete in the second match made things a little faster-paced and more exciting for the typical viewer than a series of traditional one-on-one matches would be.
However, I'm still partial to round-robin match play for determining who makes it into the telecasts. This allows more bowlers to remain in the competition for a longer time and to either fade toward the end or figure things out and come on strong after a weak start to move way up in the standings or even make the telecast. It also rewards bowlers for being consistently good throughout match play. In other words, it encourages bowlers to keep bowling their best at all times instead of compiling big leads in "eliminator" matches and then coasting the rest of the way, or getting down in a match and giving up because they know they're going to be eliminated after one three-game match instead of being able to rebound from it in later matches.
But round-robin match play should produce rankings or seedings going into a telecast. That is, there's a bowler with the highest pinfall after match play, second highest pinfall, and so on down to fourth place. So how do you combine an eliminator format with one that ranks and rewards bowlers according to how many pins they knocked down in match play? Obviously, if you just throw everybody into the televised matches and don't give the higher ranked or seeded bowlers some kind of advantage for having knocked down more pins in match play than the lower seeded bowlers, the highest seeded bowler could be eliminated after the first match, and that wouldn't be fair. So, how do you make things fair?
Well, I'm not sure you could make them completely fair, but one possibility would be to handicap bowlers by rank. The first seeded bowler could have, say, 20 pins added to his score, second seed 10 pins, third seed five pins, and fourth seed zero pins. This way the bowlers get rewarded or punished for how they did in match play and are encouraged to do their very best throughout match play. Furthermore, I would add one other element to the mix.
I believe that PBA Tour championships should be decided by more than just one game. I think if you really want to know who the best bowler is on a particular Sunday or, at least, who bowled best that day, you should use more than one game to determine it. For instance, Chris Barnes lost a couple of major tournaments recently to opponents--Kelly Kulick and Walter Ray Williams--who bowled blockbuster single games against him in the title match. But suppose Barnes had more of a chance to utilize his superior skills to make adjustments and overcome those single big games shot against him the way he did against Wes Malott in the Masters where he bowled 300 in the final game to overcome a 40+ point deficit after two games? That was tremendously exciting, and it showcased Barnes' ability to make adjustments.
Why not take the remaining two bowlers in a televised eliminator format and use their three game total pinfall to determine who wins the title? So, for example, in yesterday's case, the bowler with the highest three game series between Mark Scroggings and Brian Kretzer would have won the championship. This would have encouraged both players to bowl their best all three games, and it would have been a truer test of who bowled best that day than any one game can provide.
I know this sounds a little complicated. But it has the virtues of round-robin match play, rewarding TV finalists according to their overall performance during match play, making the TV finals more exciting to the typical viewer, allowing or forcing all the players to deal with the same conditions, and being the truest test of who bowled best that day.
What do you think of my proposal? If you don't like it, do you have any better ideas for making the telecasts more popular with fans while still fair to the players?
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