Bowling Philosophy-U.S. Open

"The Final Four"
by Tommy Scherrer

After 5 days and 51 games, bowling's greatest championship has been dwindled down to 4 finalists on Sunday afternoon. What every professional bowlers lives for is a chance to survive the truest test of bowling: the United States Open. Let's quickly sum up today's final four and who could walk away with the $60,000 check and a coveted 3-year exemption.

Mike Scroggins-last year's champion and this year's top seed overall stand to personally gain the most from a victory today. He will continue his late blooming career with a possible 3rd major and start the Hall of Fame talks for the left handed Texan. Scroggins also stands to make some history as well today: with a win, he will join the ranks of multiple Open championship winners and be only the second player in the modern era to win back-to-back Open titles (Dave Husted in 1995-96). Scroggins could aslo benefit just to silence some critics of last year (myself included) that he had lucked out on beating Chris Barnes en route to beating Norm Duke to win the title. Say what you want about Scroggins, but he continues to show off his great skill for the game and with a win, he can silence any doubters.

Bill O'Neill- "The Real Deal" makes his second TV appearance in a major this season. He finished tied for 3rd in the 2009 World Championship and is the only player in the final four without a major title on the ledger. The game's best young player has flicked one monkey off his back this season by winning his first career title in the 2009 Chameleon Championship. He is the game's future, no question about it. A possible title win for O'Neill could give him a late charge for the 2009-10 Player of the Year and possibly start bowling's next generation: a symbolic passing of the torch from the Walter Ray-Weber-Duke-Bohn days to the Fagan-Rash-Belmonte-Page future days. Time will only tell if that comes true, but an O'Neill victory would certainly help the cause.

Tommy Jones-former U.S. Open champion, former Player of the Year, former future, still possible future, still good enough to win, still good enough to flat out dominate today's show. But that's the main question: will he? In a 4 year span, Jones claimed 12 PBA titles and two major championships and appeared he would only take his game to new heights. Last year was a quiet year: no wins, only one top overall seed. This year: he came out of the blocks making the Motor City Open final five, however no shows since then. This is not to say that Jones has had a bad year at all, sitting 12th in points and 8th in average. However, bowling is a game where you are defined by Sundays and we as viewers have short term memory. Jones has not been on TV as much as he was 3 or 4 years ago but he also stands to further his legacy with a win today. He too would have multiple Open titles and would have his 3rd career major title on his resume.

Jason Couch-if you are Walter Ray Williams, Jr. this morning...you are sick to your stomach. Absolutely sick to your stomach. You had to chance to accomplish just some unthinkable history just by making the telecast Saturday night. He had the position round match again Norm Duke won, over, done, handed on a pike. Williams needed two strikes and count to beat Duke, leapfrog a wounded Jason Belmonte to the 4th seed, and give yourself a death grip on a record 7th Player of the Year award. After Jones beat Belmonte, it was widely assumed that the Duke-Deadeye winner was going to make the TV show. Go to pba.com this morning and view the position round matches: Belmonte is limping around on a bad hamstring, Duke is leaving a 5-7-10, Walter Ray is leaving the 3-6-9-10, but then it appears Walter Ray is gunna sneak his way in with his clutch 10th frame double. Seven on the fill and he is in.

Note: give Duke tremendous credit: he had zero ball reaction in the last game, strikes out after his 5-7-10, washout episode to shoot 201. He forces a double out of Walter. Meanwhile Jason Couch doubles to beat Pete Weber to go past Belmonte and force Walter Ray to win his match or else be a spectator. A retro diary finish courtesy of Xtra Frame:

24:05-Williams strikes on the first ball, crowd is totally behind him.

24:59-BAM!!! Walter Ray flushes the second strike, crowd thinks it is over. Mike Jakubowski thinks its a done deal. Bowling Doctor said it was enough...then, "6 is a tie, 7 is a win..."

25:37-Three-six-nine-ten...Walter Ray shoots 201, which was a tie against Duke meaning they split the 30 bonus pins, and Couch's clutch finish ended up giving him enough pins to beat Williams by two pins...two pins!!!!

For Jason Couch, this is a free roll for of the dice for him. After knee struggles and lack of consistent bowling this season, this is a chance for Couch to re-establish his Hall of Fame career. We seem to forget that Couch has 15 titles and 4 majors, as well as back-to-back Dick Weber Open titles. Again, our minds don't have as much long term memory retention as they used to...this guy was one the sport's elite for many years up until recently. A chance at major number 5 could be the jumper cables he needed to get his bowling career in the 40's on the right track.

Now it's time to break this down concentrically and find out what the four finalists have to gain from all this:

Player with most to gain: historically, it is Scroggins. Personally, it might be O'Neill. Professionally, it is Couch. I will take the historical take on this: Scroggins can officially be a Hall of Famer in the Scherrer Book of Bowling with a win today, no question about it. Hard to keep a man who has won two U.S. Open titles off any Hall of Fame roll call.

Most to lose: Couch. This could be one of his last gasps as a professional bowler. Even if Couch were to never win again, his career is still Hall of Fame caliber. However, the other side of his career has been one of remembering his younger, more powerful, animated days where he was an absolute force in major tournaments. From the professional angle, you want Jason Couch as an integral part of the PBA: talented still, opinionated, and vocal.

PBA can gain the most if...O'Neill wins. This is a lay-up drill for the PBA. You are considered a generational sport, and with that, maybe a little too old to make it relevant to a younger audience of viewers. O'Neill winning would give this generational shift a little balance. What if Jones wins, you ask? It doesn't hurt but the PBA needs a stand alone face of the next generation: one that stands above all the young guns. O'Neill can be that man with a win.

PBA gains the least if...Scroggins wins. No knock on Scroggins, but the previous statement is why it is a bad thing for Scroggins to repeat, despite what it can do for his career.

Player that can dominate? Tommy Jones. We forget this man has the highest TV winning percentage in the tour's history. He can own this telecast bowling in the first match against Couch and just run away with the field if the lanes play to his strength.

Player that can struggle? O'Neill. When O'Neill made the '09 World Championship, he tried his own strategy to play the oil pattern and it failed. In this case, he'll have one game to see what is going on and dictate his strategy that way. When it's a major, you just have to play what it out there and survive and not try to contemplate oil patterns. This comes down to straight talent and we all know O'Neill has got plenty of it.

Prediction: The seriousness of this tournament cannot be devalued. A United States Open champion is a benchmark to a season, a bowler's season, and their career. Win this event and you go down with names like Day, 'Papa, Dick Weber, Carter, Holman, Roth, McMahon, Lillard, Welu, Pete Weber, Ballard, Husted, Williams, and Duke. The winner of this championship will have history. Scroggins and Jones have been to this mountain before and have chopped it down with the edge of the their hand. Couch came close in 1999, losing to Bob Learn, Jr. in the title match. O'Neill may have more chances in his future, but you cannot predict that. What you can predict is that arguably the best player in the world right now is from Southampton, Pennsylvania. Bowling needs Bill O'Neill to usher in a new generation of superstar bowlers. Yes, it is not just enough to win a pattern named after an animal...it is time for the torch to be passed.

Please, Bill...grab the torch.

Bowling Philosophy-U.S. Open

Put simply...this IS bowling.

Every sport is defined truly by one seminal place or event that, when the annals of its sport are written, people remember the time and place. For the four major sports, that event is their world championships. For sports such as tennis, it is the green grass and ominous summer skies of Wimbledon that transcends the game: white shirts and skirts, strawberries and cream, Henman Hill/Murray Mound, and the Royal Box. Golf's marquee place is Augusta National and the Masters. Azaleas, Ray's Creek, Amen Corner, the Green Jacket, and the Par 3 contest. College football has the Rose Bowl, college basketball has the Final Four, and auto driving has their major sport sites with NASCAR's Daytona and IRL's Indy 500.

For bowling, the PBA will look to the prestigious Tournament of Champions as the game's greatest event. Only winners allowed, Hall of Famers invited, RPI champions get their opportunity, even now the Women's and Senior's world championship winners get an invite. However, the T of C has had a limited shelf life in regards to other major championships and has always been a field of players that were maybe past their prime or were one-hit wonders garnering a exemption to the PBA's marquee event.

But this IS bowling...give ME bowling...give me THE United States Open.

Give me the game's most grueling lane condition: 40 feet of oil and each board having the same amount of oil on each board, offering no area one way or the other. Give me 51 games over 5 days, as well as 33 in the last two days. Give me 24 meaningful round-robin match play games, where 180 might win you a game for goodness sakes! Give me the tradition of Woodland Bowl, of Fountain Bowl, of Carolier Lanes. Give me the "other" Green Jacket of sports. Give me the names who have won the US Open (formerly known as BPAA All-Star): Ned Day, Varipapa, Welu, Limongello, Petraglia, Johnson, Roth, Barnes, Jones, and Duke. Give me the men who have conquered the game's greatest test twice: names like Connie Schwoegler, Ballard, McMahon, Holman and Walter Ray. Give me Dave Husted; the only man to win it in back to back years in the modern era. Give me Varipapa's 1st-1st-2nd finish from 1946-1948, while only being 55, 56 and 57 years old AND bowling 100 games to boot! Give me Don Carter; who back-to-backed twice in 53-54 as well as 57-58. Give me Duke's bucket, Mika's destruction of Patrick Healey, Bohn versus Hromek (and young foul line judge Jason Couch), Voss versus Pete Weber, Barnes' solid 8, Ballard's $100,000 payday in Tacoma and the very, very, very deep inside angle in Cheektowaga for Open title #2.

And you can always give me the first family of bowling: Dick and Pete Weber. Both legends, both Hall of Fame bowlers, both 4 time US Open champions. Give PDW rolling over Thayer and Mr. Weber's class in his victories and in his son's defeat in '87. Give me the DW patches that started at the US Open on Valentine's Day after his sudden passing in 2005. Give me Pete's point to the heavens for his dad after winning his fourth in 2007. Give me all of that and another memory for 2010.

In fact, let's hope this year's US Open gives all another moment in history.

Bowling Philosophy-February 2010

Walter Ray wasn't the only winner this week...

PBA, USBC: A 'Master'ful Job

by Tommy Scherrer

In certain circumstances, you can understand why the sport of bowling is not at tip of everyone's collective social tongues. It is almost akin to the old story of the tree falling in the woods but nobody was around to see it. Loosely translated: did that mean it actually happened? The USBC Masters did happen this past week and it happened not just in Reno, Nevada or on ESPN Sunday afternoon (while NASCAR was looking around for some glue and spray paint that was a deplorable exhibition of its marquee event, the Daytona 500)...it happened the entire week on PBA.com's Xtra Frame. If you were one of the near 30,000 people who clicked on to its free preview week, you saw an entire event unfold right in front of you. If you were a bowling fan and had some free time this past week, then you should have viewed Xtra Frame as well as tip your cap to professional bowling's major governing bodies for allowing this to happen. They struck a figurative oil well worth of tremendous action for 5 full days, leading up to Sunday's telecast.

For one of the few times in your bowling lifetime, you were there to see it actually happen from start to finish.

It was, pardon the usage of words...'Master'ful.

And to think, it almost crashed out Monday night with an odd server issue, killing the PBA's free preview of the event. Fans got to see all the qualifying blocks, including a one game roll-off between George Lambert IV and Danny Miyamoto to decide who was the last man into the casher's round block (pressure defined at its absolute highest for bowlers: win or go home without a dime for your efforts); they also got the Masters great and unique double elimination brackets, with 3 game total pinfall determining the winners of each match. They also witnessed the beauty that was Chris Barnes, rallying from 52 pins down against reigning Player of the Year Wes Malott, and cementing it with a perfect 300 game in the final game. You also saw Barnes tear up Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the final match Friday night to give Barnes the top seed for Sunday's stepladder finals. All the matches in the end, meant something to all the players: win and make the show; lose and be a spectator to a major championship final.

Fans also got to hear some sensational feedback from Mike Jakubowski and Jeff Mark, as well as drop-ins from PBA stars such as Sean Rash, Timmy Mack, Parker Bohn III, and Mike Fagan throughout the telecast of Xtra Frame. After all, who better to get a temperature of what is going on in the tournament than the best bowlers on the planet who were bowling in it? Plus, Laneside and Bowling Doctor (Jakubowski and Mark's nicknames) answering fans questions on their Facebook page about the tournament format, the lane conditions, ball selection of the pros, layouts, ect. You name it...they talked about it. They practically gushed over Barnes' remarkable rally against Malott (and rightfully so-this was a major championship tournament and a 300 game to win your match, that says how good Barnes actually is) and how Barnes is truly the best player on the planet when he does not have to bowl just one game. We all know it, but Sundays do not give us at home or those that watch sparingly, an honest reflection of the player Christopher Barnes is but Friday night, he showed us why he is the game's alpha dog.

As for Barnes not winning the tournament, there is no great shame in losing to only the best right handed bowler of this generation and arguably all generations in Mr. Deadeye Williams, and when he pours a 290 at you in the title match, what can you say or do? Very little...'Master'ful job Walter Ray all throughout match play and the TV finals to win major number 8.

Full marks all around PBA and USBC...let's hope that in two weeks time the BPAA, who runs the US Open in conjunction with the PBA, will talk this over and come to some sort of deal where we can see this type of action again, free of charge. Yes, it might be greedy and part selfish of fans to ask for another free preview but this is bowling's most prestigious major championship. Wouldn't it be great once again to witness every game in some capacity? Time for people to start seeing some trees fall.