Bowling Philosophy-February 2012

One for the Thumb

 PDW=GOAT?
by Thomas Scherrer

Going into the the 69th United States Open Championship, I asked a few people that I trust with giving honest and candid opinions on bowling as to who they thought were on the list of the 10 greatest bowlers ever.  Once I write the paperback version of the 20 Greatest Bowlers in a few years when I need a quick influx of cash to help my bowling habit going, I will seriously look at this generation of bowlers with more scrutiny than I would have the previous generation for two reasons: 1) being I born in 1984, I cannot fairly evaluate the Roth/Anthony/Holman Era on titles money alone.  I would need more a little more background info on the players and their full impact on the game.  For instance, there is no question that the best player pre-1984 in PBA History was Earl Anthony.  How can any one argue with 43 titles, 10 Majors, 6 Player of the Year awards, and countless stories of how fans went wild for Anthony during qualifying when he threw a double.  Not match play, not shooting a 300, not a TV finals match, but like the 2nd game of the first block of qualifying.  
But is Earl Anthony the most important player pre-1984???  Not even close.  That belongs to Mark Roth.  All one needs to do is evaluate bowling's modern game and see that it is a game of power mixed with speed control, axis rotation, and insane angles I can only dream of and look back to when a young man from Staten Island decided to cock his wrist outward, take 6 rapid steps, wait, and uncork the ball at pins that had never seen anything close to what Roth was trying to accomplish.  He wasn't trying to strike...he was trying to massacre the pins.  Nowadays, everyone does that.  It is the ones who stroke the ball with finesse, touch, and accuracy are looked at like they are lost in the Delorean.  I will now promptly go wander into downtown Worcester traffic.  Holman was unique in that his career should matter more but he is more known for his antics, temper, and the rather depressing way he vanished from being a competitive bowler in the blink of an eye.  Plus, you'd never teach his style of game to anyone today where Holman slid after he released the ball.  It would almost be impossible in today's game.

As for the post-1984 bowlers, all of them for the most part could bowl in any era and be professional bowlers...it is the great players from this era that matter.  Walter Ray matters, Norm Duke matters, Mike Aulby matters, Parker Bohn III matters, Brian Voss matters, Chris Barnes matters (OK, he should matter more), Jason Couch certainly matters, and Pete Weber matters.  It is likely Duke and Williams would still be legends if you stuck them in the 1960's through the 1990's, Aulby's game was more tailored to the 80's and 90's and his record reflects that, Couch and Barnes would have further enhanced the 1970's power game revolution and would matter maybe even more than they do today, and Bohn and Voss would have been great players no matter what era they bowled, but in this generation, they would have been criticized for only winning one major each.  They are lucky for their legacies that they came along earlier (and yes, neither Bohn or Voss would be in my top 10 despite everything I just said).  Which leaves us with Pete Weber...

We have never seen anything like Peter D. Weber in our lifetimes: a 5 foot, 7 inch bowler who acts like he is 6'5".  He bowls with a noticeable passion that is reflected in most every shot he throws.  While we see players like Williams, Voss, and Couch react on the lanes but Weber reacts as if every shot is life or death.  No player polarizes fans more than Weber-he's almost like a battery, running off both positive and negative energy to create electricity-or makes them come out of their seats faster.  He has always lived in his father, Dick's shadow, and the more he escapes that shadow symbolically, he physically resembles his father in looks.  The more he tortures himself on the lanes, the more control he gains over the moment.  Nope, we've seen some pretty unique people who are blessed with The Gift, but no player has truly possessed The Curse of bowling like Pete Weber.  He owns it, he shapes it for all of us to see.  We all know Barnes is tortured inside for his numerous failures in the big moment, but with Weber, we see it.  He took bowling fans on a 90-minute roller coaster this past Sunday in winning his record setting 5th Open championship, but the internal hell he was waging with himself-the struggle we never see or witness-must have been more gut-wrenching.  

In one week, Weber set several milestones with his 53 game marathon performance.  Aside from being the only man alive to win 5 Open championships, he became the oldest US Open champion ever, at 49 years of age.  He also won his 9th Major title, moving him one behind Anthony for most majors in a career and in the process, he went past Anthony.  Lost in the shuffle of all of this was that Pete Weber has won more Triple Crown events (9) than Anthony (8) or Walter Ray (5) or Duke (6) or anyone...ever.  Counts for something, no?  He now is already locked into the top 32 for the Tournament of Champions, where he has recently bowled very well...who's to say he cannot win another one and win Major #10 and totally throw the 20 Greatest Bowlers paperback into a total frenzy?

You see, the dirty little secret of Pete Weber's career that isn't really a dirty little secret is that we are always going to feel that Pete Weber never reached his full potential as a bowler.  Sadly, Weber left something on the table.  It is almost like Weber had the potential to get a PhD from Harvard but instead settled for a PhD from Stanford.  Still pretty damn impressive but not as good as it could have been.  When Walter Ray, Duke, and Bohn were beginning to peak in the early to mid-90's, Weber took a few steps back, struggled to acclimate to a changing game, admittedly drank too much, and contemplated quitting the game and going back to school to work on a trade.  His wife, Traci, wouldn't let him, told him to get his head out of his ass and be Pete Weber.  While he slowly returned to being Pete Weber, the PBA thought otherwise and suspended him in 2000 when he got confrontational with a fan for the remainder of the season, even when he had won 2 of the first 5 events that year and allowed Norm Duke to heist a Player of the Year award (in fairness, Duke's 2000 season is pretty good: coming within a pin of winning two majors and firmly establishing himself as one the game's greats).  

Everyone reflects on the 2001 Great Lakes Classic where he shot 299 against Steve Wilson, then crushed Bohn in the title match, and tore the roof off Spectrum Lanes in Michigan with every strike and emotion as his finest performance on TV.  Others look at the 2004 bowlersparadise.com title over Ryan Shafer as his seminal moment-his first win since the passing of his father.  Some will look at this recent win over Shafer and young studs Jason Belmonte and Mike Fagan as his greatest win.  I look back to the 1999 PBA National Championship as his greatest performance.  Shooting 290 against Hall of Famer David Ozio and erupting with each strike and the crowd responding.  Ozio has zero chance.  He even flashed an nWo "4 Life" symbol and a DDP Diamond Cutter for good sports entertainment measure (this was before he did the DX "crotch chop" and the PDW/RVD mimic in 2001) during his victory celebration.  The point is that when Weber put it all together, there wasn't a thing alive that could stop him. Not a suspension, not guys 20 years younger than him, not mourning his father's death, hell, not even a great big game bowler like Ozio.

So, where does Weber rank as far the all-time greatest bowlers go?  He is certainly a top 10 bowler, no question.  But do you penalize him for leaving something on the table or do you give it back to him for his tremendous television performances, along with his Major championships and this sustained mid to late 40's run he has had?  Is he the greatest ever?  I suppose it all depends on what your overall take of bowling should be.  If you like consistent and dominant runs, you choose Walter Ray.  If you like Major titles and overall adulation from fans, you choose Anthony.  If you like the underdog to Goliath story coupled with similar fan adulation plus performance, you choose Duke or Don Johnson.  If you like importance to the game as a whole that goes beyond wins, you choose Roth, Aulby, or Dick Weber.  If you cared about on-lane performance and seeing being entertained on a level you thought you could never be, you choose only one person: P...D...W.



For those with a knowledge and love for the Sport of Bowling...this IS Bowling Philosophy.  Namaste.