This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, December, 2019
As a bowling community, we need to agree on what cashers (or casher’s or cashers’) round is. The most thorough accounting of cashers round to date was Dante’s Purgatorio, but that was written seven centuries ago. We need to come to an understanding of modern cashers round. What is it? Why is it exclusive to bowling? Why do we all spell it differently?
Strictly in a bowling context, we know cashers round is the last chance for players who would’ve otherwise missed the cut to make the cut as well as an excuse to add another eight games to a tournament. As we all know, the one thing every tournament needs is more games in increments of eight, but if we’re going to commit to jamming a cashers round into every event, can we at least agree on how this thing is spelled?
“Cashers” isn’t even a word outside of bowling, as anyone who’s ever tried to type it knows. After autocorrect gets done with it, cashiers round, cashew round and occasionally catchers round permeate text messages and emails among bowlers. Often, the first sign of a person’s full entrenchment in the world of bowling is when the autocorrect-enabled devices finally give up and leave “cashers” alone.
Hidden among the minor annoyance of autocorrect not knowing what cashers round means is the beauty that because cashers isn’t a real word, we have full authority to determine how it’s spelled. The problem, so far, is we’re all spelling it differently.
Depending on the level of the event, the medium of the writing and the grasp of knowledge of the already-confusing topic of apostrophes, we have three competing names for this additional round of bowling.
Casher’s round is unequivocally wrong, so we can eliminate it right away. When written this way, the rules of apostrophes imply there is one casher (which, again, is not even a thing) and this is his round. While it’s true there may be one casher who advances out of this round who wouldn’t have otherwise advanced, there are still several cashers overall. Thus, please, let’s strike “casher’s round” from our vernacular.
Cashers’ round makes a better case as it includes all cashers in the possession of the round, but why are the cashers suddenly owning a round? Nobody possessed qualifying round three or full-field qualifying, but suddenly this smaller group owns cashers’ round? The only things the cashers possess more than the didn’t-make-the-cut bowlers are cash and ever-enlarging thumb wounds.
This leaves us with cashers round, our best option. Similar to the PBA Players Championship, there’s no need to muddle things with apostrophes. It’s the championship of the players, it’s the round of the cashers, but it’s not necessarily the cashers round at the Players Championship (the 2020 tournament formats have not been released yet).
This brings up a radical solution to eliminate this whole discussion: cut cashers round altogether from every event. Pay the players who made it inside the cash line for their efforts and send them on their way to get ready for the next tournament. They might even be able to enjoy the luxury of a nice dinner on a terrace somewhere. If we did this, though, the fans clamoring to attend cashers round at 8 a.m. on Monday might be disappointed, but they both seem like nice people and will probably forgive us in due time.
Such a scurrilous suggestion is an as-yet unapproachable subject, so we can discard it. In the meantime, we can at least do the same thing to the apostrophes that we’re doing to the players: cut them.