Bowling Philosophy-November 2012

"Reason to Believe"
How the PBA Tour and World Series of Bowling has gotten the most important season in the sport's history off and running in the right direction.
By Thomas Scherrer-November 10th, 2012

Every season of bowling comes and goes with heightened anticipation, whether it be a local league or tournament, college bowling season, or elite bowling tour events.  There is so much to learn and so much to experiment with from the warm summer months.  Did you purchase new equipment?  Perhaps work on a new hand position?  Grip pressure?  The basics, of course.  Then there is the PBA Tour and its "Super Sized" season, and no, I wasn't referring to Dale Traber's waistline.  That would be in reference to basically run more events-both national and international-to try and gather worldwide exposure, with the intention of trying to accomplish a very stated goal: try, try, try to firmly establish a new generation of bowlers to the audience.  This sport has been forced into adaptation on numerous occasions over the past few seasons, if only to stay relevant, but to ultimately assure the future of the sport in some way, shape, or form.  May it be having more international bowling events, a possible WSOB event outside the U.S., or to possibly engage the PBA Tour into a league.

One week into the Ship Window (what the PBA logo on Facebook looks like), the PBA got off to a very impressive start.

World Series of Striking (and occasional sparing)
For some reason, the WSOB somewhat modeled your local Thursday night men's league in terms of raw numbers.  Again, these are the best bowlers in the world, so guys putting up numbers shouldn't be a surprise to the most jaded of skeptics.  In any event, one question begs: were the numbers too high?!?  Consider these facts: of the 16 TV finalists for the 4 named Animal patterns, the lowest average to make the shows was Tom Daugherty's 232.93 average in the Bowlers' Journal PBA Scorpion Championship.  Think about that for a moment: Daugherty had to shoot just under a 700 series per 3 game block to barely make one telecast.  And thankfully, Daugherty did not have to include his TOC television score at any point.

Wolfe Score
The honors go to Mike Wolfe for his performance in the Alka Seltzer Plus Cold Cheetah Championship.  In a tournament free on heartburn in terms of generating a ball reaction, Wolfe led the "Cheat" with a blistering 253.57 average over 14 games.  Fairly impressive, no?  Wolfe was 51 pins better than Dearborn, Michigan native Jeff Roche.  The difference between Roche and Wes Malott, who finished 6th?  Just 54 pins.  Over the course of just 14 games, the distance Wolfe gained in relation to the rest of the field was staggering, when you consider the scoring environment (very high), and the shortness of the format, and the ever fearing risk-reward nature the Cheetah pattern provides.  One shaky game or one loose shot could have separated some from not just a television show, but even cashing.  Of the 30 best individual averages during the 4 Animal events, all 16 finalists from the Cheetah Championship made the list, with Brett Spangler coming in with the 24th best average at 236.29.  Had Spangler duplicated that performance on the Scorpion Championship, he would have led the event by 13 pins over Osku Palermaa.  

Oh, no...he's going to Z-Score you, huh?
Wha....me?  Why would I ever do such a thing to you?  The answer: to prove a point.  While averages are sexy, they do not tell the story of how great the performances were.  Z-Score does.  We already established the high scoring of the Cheetah Championship; the Chameleon Championship also had its share of big numbers as well.  For example, here are the 10 highest individual averages from this past week (excluding the PBA World Championship):

1. Mike Wolfe                      Cheetah         253.57     
2. Jeff Roche                        Cheetah         249.93
3. Chris Loschetter               Cheetah         248.43
4. Bill O'Neill                       Cheetah          248.36
5. Jason Belmonte                Chameleon     247.29
6. Lennie Boresch Jr.            Cheetah          246.36
7. Wes Malott                      Cheetah          246.07
8. Walter Ray Williams Jr.     Chameleon     245.21
9. PJ Haggerty                     Cheetah          243.43
10. Scott Norton                    Chameleon     242.79

Now, here are the Z-Scores of each bowler, with the ranking in parenthesis:

Wolfe             2.13     (1)

Roche            1.38     (5)

Loschetter      1.07     (10)

O'Neill           1.05     (11)

Belmonte        1.75     (2)

Boresch Jr.       .64     (22)

Malott              .58     (25)

Williams Jr.     1.52     (4)

Haggerty          .04     (T30)

Norton           1.25     (9)   

First, we notice that 6 of the top 10 are from the Cheetah and Chameleon, with O'Neill just outside the top 10 in eleventh place.  We also notice that yes, Wolfe's performance was an impressive and dominant performance both in terms of raw numbers and my hippie-wearing, bra-burning, Colorado-pot smoking numbers (I'm only kidding about the pot smoking).  But as for the rest of the bowlers outside the top 11, Boresch, Malott, and Haggerty fail to match up to be even close.  That leaves us 11 players who bowled better between O'Neill and Boresch.  We are also missing the #3, 6, 7, and 8 top Z-Scores...and these gentlemen were:

Brad Angelo           (Viper)        1.57

Sean Rash               (Viper)        1.37

Osku Palermaa     (Scorpion)     1.34

Belmonte              (Scorpion)     1.31

The Scorpion Championship also had double the amount of bowlers that fell into the top 15 Z-Scores (6), than the other 3 patterns (3 each), making it arguably the most competitive tournament of the 4, which would make sense considering the field average of the Scorpion Championship for the 16 finalists was the lowest at  228.39.  The point is, as I've alluded to...averages are not the end-all to bowling.

PB3-The Original Prototype

If there is a sentimental favorite going into the televised finals of the PBA World Championship, one would be hard pressed not to be rooting for Parker Bohn III.  Bohn, a native of Jackson, New Jersey did not make it to the WSOB practice session not by way of absent-mindedness or promotional events, or simple apathy...he was living up to being bowling's greatest modern day ambassador.  With the damages sustained in New Jersey during Super Storm Sandy, Bohn stayed an extra day to help friends and neighbors recover from the horrifying effects of the storm, as first reported by Bill Vint on pba.com.  Bohn then proceeded to bowl just well enough to make the 24th and final match play position, and then lost a tournament tying low 8 games to find himself in the 5th and final position for the stepladder.  At 49, Bohn is sitting on the final few legs of an historic career, one for which he has accomplished everything.  Two Player of the Year awards, 30+ titles, 300 game on TV, 4 Japan Cup titles, 4 Steve Nagy Sportsmanship awards, and countless stories of Bohn being an ambassador, leader, and model citizen.  The one major outlier to his resume is just that: majors, as in he has only one (2001 ABC Masters).  If you could poke a hole in Bohn's legacy, it would be just that.  For all of Bohn's 32 wins, he has been small when the stakes have been the highest on national soil.  If Bohn were to win, he'd have that elusive 2nd major, as well as be the 15th bowler to come from 24th place in match play to a title, amid the struggle millions in the tri-state area are enduring due the dual storms of Sandy and Athena.  Would there be a more emotional and satisfying victory in recent bowling memory?  I dare you to come up with a better one.

Draft-y

If you were lucky enough to view the inaugural PBA Draft on Friday, it was quite a site to see.  For the first time, the PBA is going back to the future by establishing 8, 6 person teams (we thank Mike Fagan for drafting Kelly Kulickk as his supplemental pick, otherwise we would have had to check everyone's heart medication, except Pete Weber-we'll get to that) and having them cwisehad toompete in team competitions still to be determined at Detriot's famed Thunderbowl in January.  Norm Duke got the 1st selection and sort of surprised everyone with selecting Rhino Page.  Sort of surprisingssurprising in that taking a lefty in Page with the first pick, but not an illogical pick for Duke-after all, Page might be the only player on tour Duke can literally talk to eye-to-eye, but I digresso-eyea.  Page, as we all remember led Kansas to the 2006 IBC Championships and is arguably the best left hander in the Ship Window.  In fact, most teams decided having a lefty around was not a terrible idea (well, except Chris Barnes-I know, you're shocked by this is eis revelation and Fagan, but he chose Kulick so he's off the hook, sorta).  

One of those left handers was Scott Norton, chosen by Pete Weber with 2nd pick.  In the process, Weber made history in this decision.  Norton, an open homosexual, has officially/unun-officiallyial become the first openly gay member of a team sport that I can think of in American professional sports.  Yes, the PBA is not entirely a league entity, but the point remains that professional bowling made a bit ofof history Friday.  Fitting that the son of a Hall of Fame dad would draft the son of a Hall of Famee mom, in a landmark moment.  Should it be such an issue?  No, it shouldn't be.  We should clearly look beyond the scope of sexual orientation as to how it pertains to athletic performance by now, but there are still plenty of close-minded people in our society that do not think that this is acceptableacceptable.  I tell them to go read someone else's blog then.  As for everyone else, thank you for your continued support in allowing me to offer intelligent and insightful conversation into the world of bowling.  We are hopefully in for one of the more memorable seasons in PBA history.  We all need a reason to believe.

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