"Bowling Blind"-The Exteme Swing

At long last, this is a title match...

PBA Tour

"It's About Damn Time"

Well...we have finally arrived to this moment...

It took us roughly nine long seasons to achieve this matchup for a PBA title. The bowler of the 90's, Walter Ray Williams, Jr. and the bowler of the 2000's, Chris Barnes will meet for the GoRVing Match Play Championship tomorrow afternoon in Norwich, CT. For Walter Ray, it is another notch on his legendary Hall of Fame resume to add a mixed pattern championship after the devastating, heart-stomping loss to Patrick Allen to start the second half of the season in Reno. For Chris Barnes, this is the 4th consecutive finals appearance he has made and in the fourth consecutive Extreme Swing format tournament, he has a shot at winning in what can only be described as truly the best 4 week stretch of bowling we have seen from any player in, quite possibly, the history of the sport.

Barnes in the last 4 events has thrown plastic balls, bowled on 6 different patterns in 5 days, navigated through an eliminator mega-bucks style format, and now through an all match play format. The last two he has bowled on have had the mixed patterns and in case anyone forgot, Barnes has made two other shows this half on the first mixed pattern event and then the Dick Weber Open and its difficult lane pattern. To review, Barnes has made 6 shows the second half of the season on fourteen patterns. Are you kidding me??? In the annals of PBA history, we may never know how good this run by Barnes is only because...we have nothing to base this performance on.

The PBA has never attempted to showcase its best players in tournaments that have truly tested their overall game. For years, the game had been the same: 42 games, 18 in qualifying, 24 round-robin matches, stepladder for the final 5 in a 90 minute telecast. Admittedly, it got kinda boring to watch and this a bowling fan talking, wondering how those in charge of the PBA didn't feel like changing things up every now and then to see if maybe a novelty could become standard. Things changed in the 2001-02 season with single elimination match play. Best of 5 and best of 7 matches in head-to-head competition with the finalists bowling on the show. Fans were able to make believe for a moment and see possible rivalries develop and get emotionally invested. Supporting their favorite player of players compete against guys that they didn't like or hated in some cases to develop an emotional investment in the product so that they would camp their behinds on their sofa and watch the telecast on Sunday, or buy tickets to the local event, or possibly go bowl with their favorite players in a pro-am or two during the week to establish a following with bowling.

There was hope...but hope sometimes can dangle on a string like slow spinning redemption and in the case of the PBA, it could never get a true desired rivalry for its fans to get behind.

Walter Ray vs. Pete Weber, you say???

Fans forget that a rivalry must have both sides that can win and must both be presented as winners. While Walter Ray beat Weber from pillar to post every time they bowled, Weber became more and more less over with the fans as the man. If you can't beat the great Williams at any point on television, then are you worth the hype? The answer is no way.

Ryan Shafer vs. Norm Duke???

Not even worth mentioning as a rivalry. Duke has embarrassed Shafer in his career on TV so much so to where Shafer has basically had a Hall of Fame career denied thanks to one man alone.

Barnes vs. Tommy Jones???

Really....? Guys, Jones has whacked Barnes like the Wall Street Journal does to a housefly.

The only rivalry that came out of the match play format was Patrick Allen and Mika Koivuniemi, much of it due to Mika's audacity calling himself "Left Hander's Wurst Nightmare" and PA beating him in that classic US Open match where they went to a sudden-death roll-off to where Allen yelled out to the Jersey crowd that it was a new season and a different outcome. Other than that, they haven't had enough head-to-head matches to truly have anything long lasting on TV.

What about Barnes vs. Williams???

Ah, the rivalry that never was. If you do your homework, these two players have only met for a title once and it was a major, the 2004 ABC Masters. It was fun to watch as a fan. Barnes was still throwing Brunswick and wearing shirts with the American flag and eagle on it. Walter Ray still has his full beard and only had 38 titles at the time. It was great to watch arguably the two finest players in the world go strike for strike on the shortest pattern in tour history at 34 feet. The only poor shot thrown was by Barnes late in the title match as Walter Ray was charging close to a perfect game in a major tournament. It showed two things to me: 1) Walter Ray was still a factor in bowling and in the big events where Barnes was making common occurrences and 2) we would get to see this a few more times in the coming years. Five years later...

Here we stand today and we have been waiting a long time for this moment to come around. Walter Ray vs. Barnes. The two players that have come to define the beauty of bowling and its curse in the last 20 years. The smartest player to ever bowl against the most talented and dedicated bowler ever. Also the greatest rivalry that never was in bowling history. The possible passing of the torch that never came around. They have three games tomorrow to show us their smarts and their talents by themselves and for a title.

Gentlemen...make us proud.