Category: Bowlers Journal International

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2022

Unless something changes between the time of this writing and the time of publication (a mere nine months or so), there’s no Major League Baseball this season, once again proving bowling as the true American pastime. Bowling is also the true international pastime, but we’re attacking baseball here, not soccer.

If and when baseball returns, its only hope at salvation is to borrow from bowling. Imagine:

Baseball stadium. 8:43 a.m. It’s the top of the third inning, which means we’ll likely get our first-inning scoring update somewhere around the time of the second out. At bat is feared slugger D, who’s always seemed to have the advantage against former Cy Young Award winner A, but A has been pitching well through the first two innings, so there’s no telling what might happen here.

The fans sit quietly and respectfully, awaiting the next burst of action. A winds up, but at that exact moment, a child behind the plate absent-mindedly lifts his cup to his mouth to enjoy a sip of soda. The pitcher halts his delivery and, although B and C are on second and first, respectively, the umpires do not decree a balk due to the extenuating circumstances. In the next section over, a bumbling man seizes the opportunity to visit the restroom, then trips over a trash can, which crashes to the ground and reverberates throughout the hushed stadium, eliciting hateful, exasperated glares from the other fans.

The runners take off on the next pitch. D crushes the pitch in what is possibly the hardest-hit liner in baseball history. The fans explode from dead silence into uncontrollable screaming. Unfortunately for D, the best contact he’s ever made sent the ball right at the second baseman, who catches the ball, then throws to second base for out number two, where the shortstop then completes the triple play by throwing to first. The fans can barely contain themselves with excitement but are unsure whether they’re allowed to continue cheering or if they should’ve stopped and then restarted cheering between each out. A voice from the upper deck conveys his amazement at the second baseman’s skill, shouting, “What glove is he using?”

Throughout the grandstands, eyes squint at the scoreboard, trying to make out vaguely familiar shapes to determine what might be happening. An audible murmur grows as loud as fans feel comfortable, trading tips on how to properly call a pitch sequence and tales of their .700 batting averages in local recreational softball leagues.

E takes the mound for the visitors in the bottom of the third, violently gesturing at the fans to turn their low murmur into complete silence. They comply. The first-inning scoring update, delayed due to the unexpected triple play, finally posts. After one, the score is 0-0, but once a two- and three-inning scoring update is available, the game will begin to take shape.

Skip ahead to the bottom of the ninth inning. The scoreboard indicates the home team led by three runs through seven innings, but it looked like the visitors had a good performance in the eighth, so depending on what happened in the eighth and the top of the ninth, the home team might need a base hit or they may have already won.

At the plate is the league’s best hitter, H, who always knows the score, and his demeanor suggests he needs a hit, so the crowd reasonably assumes he is correct. B is on second base, and the general consensus is there are two outs. Tension mounts. The only sound is that of the hot-dog fryer behind section 126, which is quickly unplugged when H shouts at the cook.

The pitcher winds up and hurls his best pitch. H takes a vicious hack way too early. He whiffs. Strike three. Game over.

Maybe it’s not so bad for the home team. H seems nonchalant about the strikeout. Is it because he knows his team has already won? Or is it just the way he reacts to failure? The fans clamor for positioning in front of the scoreboard, talking over each other as they rapidly figure the mathematics of the many different scenarios that could determine the result of the game.

The public-address announcer tells the fans to go online in an hour or so for the final result, then reminds the players to stick around in the event of a tie, in which case they will need to play nine more innings after a short break for the head groundskeeper to mow the grass.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, March, 2022

Now that the PBA Tour is once again in full pun-intended swing and both the PBA50 and PWBA Tours will get underway in the next couple months, we’re seeing a lot of practice. We’re enjoying unofficial practice, official practice, official unofficial practice, official pre-practice practice, unofficial post-practice practice, official post-pre-practice-practice practice, non-competition-pair practice, competition-pair practice, warm-up practice, unofficial TV-pair practice, official TV-pair practice and the ol’ ball-change-on-a-fill-shot practice hidden within an actual game.

If you’re a pro, you’re not seeing enough practice, particularly on the TV pair, and if you’re a fan, you’re either wondering why there is so much practice or why the scoring units aren’t on while the pros bowl what appears to be a faster version of qualifying.

In fact, many will argue that practice is more compelling than qualifying. There are no scores on the monitors, but the pace is quicker and the players are using their insight to work out their strategies for the much, much slower next 3-5 days that do use scoring monitors, even if still no one knows the score. Practice is legitimately interesting, which is another attribute it holds over qualifying.

Beyond that, there are a lot of exceptional things about practice. One of the absolute best is prior to match play, which generally features pre-practice practice held on non-competition pairs prior to official practice on competition pairs. Between the two practice sessions, the tournament director announces over the PA, essentially, “Players, hold up on your practice. It’s time to start practice.”

Any announcement decreeing an end to practice is inevitably accompanied by a cacophony of pins crashing after the tournament director orders an end to pins crashing. These adult professionals are performing the equivalent of a peewee hockey practice, during which every coach’s whistle is immediately followed by 12 pucks banging against the boards.

With all this unofficial and official practice going on, it’s hard to imagine an opportunity for even more practice, but professional bowlers are cunning. The penalty for practicing outside of practice is a potential code of ethics violation that comes with a fine, but crafty bowlers have found ways to get additional practice in between practice and they’ve done it without breaking any rules.

We start with The Practice Slide. There isn’t much better on a surveillance-style live stream than the pre-practice or between-games Practice Slide. Since players only get official practice on their starting pairs, they can’t take a full delivery before their subsequent games, but they can walk to the line and slide to the line (as long as they’ve yielded both ways, of course).

So, if they can walk to the line and slide, what’s to stop them from making an actual approach to the line and sliding? Nothing. And, if they can make an actual approach to the line and slide, what prevents them from adding an arm swing to it? Again, nothing. And, if they can make a full approach to the line and slide while swinging their arm, why can’t they put a ball in their hand? They can. The only thing they can’t do is deliver the ball. The Practice Slide has evolved into The Practice Balk. And it’s entirely legal. The only downside is many of them are taking it into competition, although we can’t fault them, because once The Practice Balk becomes part of The Process, it must be trusted.

Anything that wouldn’t be a foul during competition is legal outside the confines of practice. Before practice, after practice, between games, even during games, these things can all be done without repercussions. Like a baseball pitcher constantly throwing to first base with no penalty although such an act should be designated a ball in the count, bowlers can practice absolutely everything aside from letting go of the ball without penalty. At the line, that is. Bowlers can let go of the ball anywhere else whenever they want.

Non-practice practice makes imperfect perfect.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, February, 2022

Most subscribers to this publication were born knowing how to read pairings sheets. But for the thousands of casual readers picking this issue off the shelf in the bookstore while waiting for your latte, this is an essential tutorial as you prepare to follow professional bowling in 2022.

Lesser sports, like football, merely say “Dallas at Washington” and expect fans to be able to make sense of it. In bowling, we devise intricate flowcharts and infographics to ensure no one will ever accidentally understand what they’re watching. We value hard work. We earn our fandom.

We must preface this by honoring the brilliance of the pairings sheet. In a sport that involves so many elements that can confuse outsiders, the pairings sheet amazingly condenses the chaos of qualifying into a legible format in a remarkably small space.

For this tutorial, we’ll use an example of one group from an actual pairings sheet from a real tournament at the highest level of the sport: the PBA. This is from the first round of qualifying in the 2021 PBA Players Championship East Region. We selected this particular group because (A) Davidson made it to the East Region Finals, (B) Troup won the whole thing, (C) Neuer got famous shortly thereafter, (D) “Ptq Qualifer6” is hilarious and apparently hails from Virginia.

The first thing we need to understand is these four players will be bowling together all day. This is called crossing with each other. The prominent 43-44 just to the left of Davidson’s name tells us where they’re starting. If you walk in for game one of qualifying, pick up a pairings sheet, say to yourself, “I’m a huge fan of Ptq Qualifier6 and want to watch him bowl,” you simply walk over to lanes 43 and 44 and this entire group will be there.

Great. Snag a good seat and strap in for the next four hours, right? No. After the first game, these people begin packing up their equipment and moseying to their right. Four different people come into view, unpack their equipment and start bowling on 43-44. What? This is a travesty. Where is the group you wanted to watch? This is the cross; they’re crossing the house. Why? Fairness.

Because each pair of lanes differs topographically from every other pair of lanes, the bowlers have to move throughout qualifying to ensure no one gets an unfair advantage of getting to bowl on a “good” pair all day and no one gets an unfair disadvantage of having to bowl on a “bad” pair all day. We should also note that designating a pair as good or bad rarely deals with actual stats but rather a rumor started by one player who had a good or bad game on a particular pair.

So, to approach fairness, the players bowl each game on a different pair of lanes. The bottom line on the pairings sheet explains this. You’ll see G1: 43-44, which we already know, then G2: 49-50. Now it starts to get intuitive. For game two, this group will be on lanes 49-50. Game three is on 9 and 10. And so on. This is also handy for late-arriving fans because if you show up after the event starts, you will have absolutely no clue which game they’re bowling, so you can cross-reference who is bowling on any particular pair with this bottom line to determine where they are and when it might end, pending a rolloff.

We should also note that while moving from pair to pair increases the overall fairness quotient, it doesn’t guarantee fairness. If you’re following a lefty throwing urethane or a high-rev righty chewing up the lanes or someone who doesn’t “play the lanes right,” then it is inherently unfair to you. But, as we know, the only true fairness in bowling is that of an unfair advantage.

In our sample group, we have a one-handed righty, a two-handed righty, a one-handed lefty and a total wildcard. Hearsay dictates it is utterly impossible to follow this group or to be in this group. Never mind that two of them made it to the regional finals.

Pairings sheets are impressively efficient and borderline genius in their ability to make sense of incomprehensible situations. And we haven’t even gotten to the poor pairings sheets tasked with corralling the complete confusion and prolonged qualifying rounds of a variable-skip format. Nor should we. Ever. Nothing, not even a pairings sheet, should be asked to make sense of that.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, January, 2022

In The One Board’s sixth annual year-start countup, we greet the new year with ardor and guarantee* 22 bowling-related happenings.

*Based on number of entries

1. François Lavoie enters and wins the Team USA Trials. He becomes the first player ever to be removed from the team due to résumé when his résumé, in addition to his two U.S. Open wins and three BJI All-American Team selections, reveals he was born in Canada.
2. The amazing thing isn’t that a Canadian is able to enter or win; rather, the amazing thing is that someone figures out the points system to determine who wins.
3. The PBA Players Championship further establishes itself as the perfect PBA season-opening event, mixing new and familiar faces into the telecasts to generate immunity against both “I’m sick of seeing the same faces” and “Where are the superstars?” complaints.
4. Tom Daugherty, tired of his name being misspelled so frequently (“Daughtry,” “Daughtery,” or, in the case of the BJI All-American Team, “Belmonte,”) legally changes his name to Rebel. Players refuse to accept it and continue calling him Ritchie.
5. A player on a brief hiatus “can’t wait to get back to competing again.” When he returns to competition, he’s asked how it feels to be back to competing. He says, “I don’t care what anyone else is doing and I only focus on my own game.” He’s glad to be back to competing so he can ignore the competition.
6. That player stuns everyone when, prior to bowling in the stepladder finals, he states, “It’s great to be on the lanes today, but I’d rather be in the booth with you guys.”
7. During the semifinal match, that player employs a radical strategy and refuses to trust the process. Miraculously, he wins, but the victory fools him into trusting his mistrust of the process, leading to a blowout loss in the championship match. He’s named to the BJI All-American Team.
8. A fan, after paying nothing to get in, buying no merchandise and eating no concessions asks, “Why aren’t the prize funds bigger?”
9. The prize funds are bigger than ever.
10. High-fives are banned in college bowling.
11. Free of incessant hand slapping, averages, graduation rates and viewership soar to new highs.
12. History is made when, three hours into qualifying, after many promises of what will be interesting to see, that interesting thing is, indeed, seen.
13. It’s quickly forgotten in favor of prognosticating what will be interesting to see during B squad.
14. A local tournament flier finally achieves the ultimate goal: absolutely no white space whatsoever. It’s simply a giant blob of ink.
15. The event receives record entries despite no one knowing the non-guaranteed guaranteed first-place payout, the convoluted format or which free bowling ball they get just for entering. A PBA Tour superstar wins.
16. Mookie Betts challenges local softball players to homerun derbies around the country between Dodgers games. Betts loses to a librarian who swings one-handed.
17. The librarian’s bat becomes the talk of the baseball industry.
18. Airports finally reconfigure their parking rates to match USBC’s definition of short- and long-duration events. Short-term airport parking lots are now available for anyone traveling for 127 days or fewer.
19. The Matrix of Fairness returns to the PBA50 Tour, now with even more fairness. In addition to the top 32 players plus the next eight super seniors, the first eight non-super-seniors outside the cut from the previous event also make it to cashers round. If one of those previous-event-non-super-seniors makes the real cut in the current event, he’s issued two entries into cashers round and gets to bowl double the games.
20. The ball rep who most closely predicted the cut in the previous event is enlisted to determine the next four super seniors who will miss the cut in the subsequent event. Those players are also entered into cashers round. Cashers round is expanded to 56 games and also allows open entries to any fans who can name at least three bowling balls released more than a year ago. After the 56-game cashers round, all scores are dropped and the names of the top 24 advancing to match play are drawn from an old fishing hat.
21. Walter Ray Williams Jr. wins.
22. Attendance and ratings for professional bowling reach all-time highs. It’s a good time to be a bowling fan and a good time to be a bowler. Unless the humidity rises overnight.

Happy New Year, bowling fans. Wishing you happiness, prosperity and a mastery of subtle hand-position adjustments in 2022.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, December, 2021

The 7-10 split has only been converted four times in the history of the PBA Tour… on television. The big four has only been converted once… on television. Only 32 PBA perfect games have ever been bowled… on television (not counting the other several that were bowled on television but don’t count for some reason).

Bowling is obsessed with television. Once again, the secret language of bowling separates us from every other sport.

Anyone reading this publication knows that “on television” simply means we’re talking about the final round of competition. We know by the time the tournament gets to TV that qualifying, match play or whatever chaotic format was in place for that event (preferably with an extended cashers round) has already happened, and that in all likelihood, perfect games were bowled, big splits were felled and difficult conditions were conquered. So, to us, converting the 7-10 split on television is special because it was during the most important part of the tournament: the finals or, in bowling vernacular, “on TV.”

No other sport talks about their championships this way. Most sports are either completely televised or not televised at all. “On TV” means nothing to them but it means a lot to us.

Imagine the ABC network executives during the early talks to put the PBA on TV. “You do what? For how long? What can you do in an hour and a half?” The televised victory lap wasn’t doing much in the way of captivating audiences. Bowling had to adapt to time constraints and entertainment value to create The Television Show.

Introducing the stepladder finals, which feature head-to-head matches novice viewers who happen upon the telecast can understand. Framing it as most other sports operate, the week of qualifying becomes the regular season for seeding, no matter how big one player’s lead is over another’s, and the TV show becomes the playoffs for the championship. This is—prepare yourself for a dreadful word—unfair, but it’s also why bowling was and is on TV in a semi-comprehensible form.

One of the most brilliant subtleties from the Documentary Now! episode based on A League of Ordinary Gentlemen is the character parodying Pete Weber constantly howling about beating the character satirizing Walter Ray Williams Jr. “on TV.” In the original documentary, that makes perfect sense because we, as bowling fans, know what that means. Williams owned Weber in televised finals matches, so Weber wanted to beat Williams on TV, which is to say the finals. Completely sensible to us. But to a non-bowling human being? Who cares if it’s on TV? Don’t you just want to beat him?

Let’s go to Champa Bay for a moment. The Tampa Bay Lightning just won the Stanley Cup on TV! The Tampa Bay Buccaneers just won the Super Bowl on TV! The Tampa Bay Lightning just won the Stanley Cup again on TV! Tom Daugherty just won the World Championship on TV!

Only one of those sounds normal, although it is strange in its normalcy.

Writing of Daugherty, remember when he yelled at the pins about Jason Belmonte? “He can’t beat me!” Daugherty shouted after clinching victory over Belmonte in the 2016 PBA Wolf Open. The pins are inanimate objects, so they didn’t understand Daugherty actually meant, “He can’t beat me on television,” which was true at the time in that Daugherty had never lost to Belmonte on TV. The next day, Daugherty did lose to Belmonte on TV, but it was in the King of the Swing non-title exhibition, so we can’t say for sure if that televised match counts as being televised.

There’s something special about performing under the hot lights of television, with the hot lights of course being non-heat-emitting LEDs. Spectators, who do emit heat, surround the action closely, adding to the enormity of the moment. Bowling huge scores, picking up nearly impossible splits and winning championships in the unique finals setting that is a PBA telecast are all worthy of plaudits. The players who can compete under that pressure deserve acclaim and respect.

It’s because of that, as well as the quest for titles, that players enter events with the goal to “get to TV.” Even if, in a sport constantly striving for perfect fairness, getting to TV means making it through the fair-as-can-be preliminary rounds to earn a slot in the utterly unfair stepladder finals.

Unless the top seed wins. Then it’s fair. Or if the second seed wins after losing as the top seed last week, but only if this week’s top seed previously won from a lower seed… on television.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2021

Coming soon to CBS: Smallwood, a half-hour sitcom based on the life of three-time PBA Tour champion Tom Smallwood. Great news, right? The bowling community will certainly support this with a zealousness not seen since the latest batch of ball releases.

Or, we’ll pre-loathe it because we fear it won’t “treat bowling right.”

Smallwood’s fellow PBA Tour competitors are excited for him and for the game (“One of our guys has a TV show”). Similarly, for-fun recreational bowlers are looking forward to a TV show that features bowling (“Hey, cool, I like bowling”). But there’s another group within bowling that finds a sitcom a personal affront to this great sport of ours. This is without having seen an episode, too. So, if that group is going to pre-detest Smallwood without seeing it, this column is going to pre-laud it without seeing it.

In the two-minute trailer, Smallwood wears a wrist brace (oh, no). His wife gives him a new bowling ball, his first in 10 years (as if the real Smallwood didn’t have a 4,000-ball arsenal before his Tour days). Smallwood sees a guy on TV (cleverly, the real Smallwood) bowl a score lower than he just bowled on presumably house conditions, leading to the erroneous I-can-beat-that-guy mindset. Perhaps the scariest is the dialogue about family life: precious words wasted on life lessons rather than contemplating pitch changes.

These types of things give pause to the detractors, and no, these things do not align with competitive bowling reality, but guess what percentage of the non-bowling sitcom-watching audience knows—or cares—about that? Zero percent.

So, maybe this is a chance to educate that audience and suddenly convert millions of people from complete obliviousness into obsessed pin-placement enthusiasts? No. This is a half-hour sitcom. They’re not going to spend each episode going through in-depth tutorials on how to apply the appropriate surface for the lane condition, when and why to use thumb tape or how to determine which shoe sole is best for the venue and humidity. There aren’t going to be any special five-hour episodes to show Smallwood grind his way through a grueling qualifying block nor will we see detailed descriptions of immensely complicated tournament formats.

It is a sitcom about a family. Being that Smallwood is the father, he will likely be a bumbling father who bowls, no different from Raymond being a bumbling father who is a sportswriter or that King of Queens guy being a bumbling father (was he a father or merely a bumbling husband?) who works for a fake UPS. Did Everybody Loves Raymond kill sportswriting? Was there an uprising among sportswriters demanding that show ignore the antics of Raymond and instead focus on the intricacies of covering an event and drafting a story? Did King of Queens destroy the logistics industry? Did Cheers put an end to bars?

Space Jam featured a cartoon bunny. Basketball remains fine. Field of Dreams used ghosts—ghosts!—and baseball somehow survived. But we’re worried about a custom bowling ball?

If Smallwood doesn’t fully understand the intricacies of the game or if it makes fun of bowling, who cares? And why worry about it in advance?

This is the first time a real PBA Tour player will have his story used as the basis for an actual TV show that will air on a major network to a completely new audience. The quality of the sitcom and its success will depend on the writing, the acting and the production, not whether or not they have explicitly defined rolloff rules or that they adequately explain the crossing procedure and how bonus pins work.

Just like we can’t teach a novice how oil breaks down until we first explain to the novice there is oil at all, we can’t attract a new audience until we show them a reason to care. The harsh reality too many people refuse to believe is that “Come watch 18 consecutive hours of people bowling and just trust us they’re really good and you’re enthralled and oh by the way you need to remain perfectly silent” is not an enticing sales pitch to an average consumer. But maybe seeing a fictionalized version of the real Tom Smallwood on television will entice a viewer to watch a few frames of an actual PBA Tour event the next time they come across it. Maybe that leads to a few more frames. Soon enough, that viewer who was hooked by a fictional sitcom is complaining that the pros don’t get enough practice on the TV pair. And isn’t that all we want?

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, October, 2021

Another summer of professional bowling brought us a lot of excitement. On the PBA Summer Tour, we witnessed two players win their first PBA Tour titles, several established stars compete deep into each tournament, a heated battle over the bonus prize fund for the top 10 and much more.

Among the much more: we saw some abhorrently difficult lane conditions in a couple events. Professional bowlers and many fans adore disgustingly demanding lane conditions and we were not disappointed. Players battling for every bit of a clean 190 rather than hoping to get the right carry to maintain a 240 average makes each one of those 18 consecutive hours of qualifying worth it.

Strikes are hard to find, spares are paramount and anybody who comes out alive is a winner in some sense, but those who make the cut and the one who hoists the trophy know without question they earned it.

In bowling, we say, “The best in the world are barely able to average 200” as a statement of honor. In tennis, “The best in the world fault on every serve” doesn’t have the same appeal.

Perhaps the biggest reward by way of punishment came at the U.S. Women’s Open with its four patterns of hardship on full display. As additional castigation, the U.S. Women’s Open took 24 players to match play and paid 25 players. Despite this, they still held an eight-game cashers round (in this case, it was called an advancers round and excluded alternate Stefanie Johnson, but we all know what it was), making sure everyone was able to get 80 more frames in which to potentially rip all the skin off their fingers and permanently lock their leg muscles in place.

An advancers round without a cut is similar to a conference call in which all participants have dialed in on time, but instead of starting the call, they sit there for four hours making slight tweaks to the agenda (which worked out nicely for two players in this case) before they begin.

As bowlers, we’re at our happiest when we’re at our most miserable.

Consider a leisurely family picnic. Instead of simply driving to the park, finding a clear spot under the shade of a tree and enjoying a meal with the family, we’d much rather sit in an unexplained traffic jam, kids screaming and fighting all the way, only to find the park packed with dozens of other families who took all the good spots, leaving us to cram between an eight-person family with six dogs on one side and some solo weirdo with a bushel of apples on the other. Ideally, ants would then invade our blanket, forcing us to fend those off as we attempt to grind out a couple bites of a sandwich.

If we really work hard and take it one bite at a time, we might get a piece of cake for dessert. Of course, we loathe pieces of cake as the phrase itself is synonymous with “easy,” and anything easy is unfair and revolting (and this is without even getting into the conundrum of something being so easy that it’s too hard). So, if we do get a piece of cake, let’s hope it has that peculiar tart frosting that doesn’t pair with the flaky white cake at all, forcing us to adjust with each bite to get through to the end.

After the picnic, maybe an invigorating hike would be fun. But only if the trail is wet, muddy, blocked with downed trees and teeming with bears and coyotes. Getting lost without any food or water as it transitions from day to night would be a nice touch, forcing us to trust the earth’s rotation to eventually bring the sun back to us.

If all goes well, the hike will eventually lead to the beach, where we’ll be battered with high winds blowing painful sand everywhere, immense waves pushing fish carcasses on shore and hundreds of teenagers spewing awful language while throwing footballs that no one ever catches. A perfect way to end an idyllic albeit exhausting day.

Finally, we can go to sleep feeling accomplished. The best part: we get to wake up early and do absolutely all of it again tomorrow.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2021

Once again, the Olympics took place without bowling. This, of course, renders the Olympics meaningless to all of us, but also makes us once again think about bowling as it relates to other sports. This time, let’s frame our thinking a little differently. We spend so much time trying to get bowling treated as an equal among other sports that we often forget why bowling is actually better than other sports.

Unpredictability

If you go to a Major League Baseball game, you know you’re going to get nine innings (or eight and a half if the home team is ahead or more than nine if the game is tied). When you go to a bowling event, you might be watching six games, maybe seven, possibly eight but perhaps five, with the champion eventually decided in a completely different way than the previous event. Maybe there are bonus pins, maybe not, conceivably it’s round-robin match play unless it’s modified round-robin, perchance a bracket with or without byes decides the winner, or there could be no match play at all, usually but not always culminating in a four- or five-player stepladder, all independent of whether or not there is an all-important cashers round at some point.

It’s working, too. The complete unpredictability (some would say incomprehensible confusion) of bowling formats from event to event is impelling professional baseball. Now, a baseball game might last seven innings instead of nine. Plus, depending on the inning and the situation, there might be a runner standing on second base to start the inning for some reason. The influence bowling has on professional baseball is becoming clearer with each overturned umpire challenge.

Short Weeks

For centuries, the workforce has loved the occasional three-day weekend that results in a short four-day workweek. In bowling, our weeks are even shorter, and not occasionally. Always. When someone wins a tournament and, in his post-game speech, gives the obligatory, “He bowled great all week” plaudit to his opponent, he usually means, “He bowled great yesterday.”

Especially during the summer, with two-day PBA Tour events, two-day PWBA Tour events and three-day PBA50 Tour events, bowling great all week typically equates to enjoying a good eight-game set earlier this morning.

Long Days

Maybe a bowling week doesn’t perfectly align with a calendar, but we certainly don’t get cheated when it comes to time. What other sport allows us to sit for 12 straight hours watching the athletes compete? Maybe a college-football Saturday or NFL Sunday can give football fans a similar fix, but that’s a mere one or two days followed by a full week of nothing before it happens again. Bowling gives us 12 hours of action every day and crams three or four “weeks” into a single real week. No one can touch us in this department.

Everyone is Better than Everyone but No One is Better than Anyone

Perhaps separating us from the rest of the sporting world more than anything else is the magnificent dichotomy embraced by bowling in which we want to prove professionals are better than amateurs while simultaneously refusing to admit some professionals are better than other professionals. Other sports waste time debating the greatest players of all time. Not us. All bowlers are better than all other bowlers but no bowler is better than any other bowler.

A pro shooting 180 on television is far more talented than an amateur rolling 220 during league. Anyone reading this publication knows this is an indisputable truth. But who is the best professional bowler in the world?

Never mind that Kyle Troup, as of July 31, leads the 2021 PBA Tour in competition points and earnings along with winning two titles this season. That could all be very different if only (insert some wild hypothetical situation) led to (insert whichever bowler you like) dominating the season.

As long as we apply the right conditional statements, we can make a case for any pro being the best out there, especially if he’s bowled great all week. That’s part of the fun. Olympics or Nolympics, there should be no debate: bowling is better than all other sports.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, August, 2021

All sports deal with unbearable clichés. In bowling’s exclusive vernacular, there are several overt clichés led by trusting the process and taking it one shot at a time, but some of the best clichés are those that go unnoticed for a while. These phrases are like the chrysalis stage of a butterfly: a common expression in a cocoon isn’t quite yet a cliché. For one such expression, the cocoon stage is over as we’re finally calling attention to it: “It’ll be interesting to see.”

Listen for it. It’s everywhere.

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly we can get this saying to emerge as a cliché, then continue using it anyway.

These types of proclamations are generally spoken by bowlers, commentators, writers, fans and tournament staff prior to any round of bowling, whether it be qualifying, match play or the live-streamed or televised finals. We’re given a series of things that will be interesting to see—which are always the same, by the way—but then we actually start seeing what we’re told will be interesting with the accompaniment of dead silence. Is it not interesting after all? Or is it so enthralling that the commentators and spectators sit in stunned reticence, amazed at the early breakdown during frame one of game one of round one of day one that, yes, it truly is interesting to see?

It will be interesting to see how the pattern breaks down. It will be interesting to see how the players manage the traffic on the lanes. It will be interesting to see which players can consistently get to the breakpoint and control the pocket. It will be interesting to see which ball everyone throws. It will be interesting to see how the players adapt to this bowling center after bowling 2,000 miles away last week. It will be interesting to see what the scoring pace is like this week after the scoring pace, whatever it was, last week. It will be interesting to see how long we keep referring to a 2- 3-day stretch as a week.

Sure, these things are interesting to see. These are the reasons we watch bowling. They take place at every single bowling event ever. Essentially, listing these things prior to every round as being interesting to see is the same as saying, “You like bowling and therefore you will enjoy everything that happens.” Of course we will. To employ another cliché, it is needless to say these things will be interesting to see.

The only thing to talk about before anything is seen is that something will be interesting to see, even if nothing interesting is ever seen. Or, if something interesting is seen, no one points out “Hey, that was interesting to see” as we merely move on to what will be interesting to see next time, forgetting that a bird in the hand is worth two in the tenth.

This is all fine. No one is being harmed by either saying or hearing that something will be interesting to see. But when are we going to see something interesting? Yes, it’s interesting to see how the pattern breaks down, but it takes a few games for that to happen, sort of like being interested to see how water evaporates on the driveway after a slight rain, which may or may not affect the approaches. It is intriguing, but there’s no sudden explosion of fascination and celebration as would erupt for a 7-10 conversion. No one ever says it’ll be interesting to see if a 7-10 is converted today. That would be fantastical and outlandish.

And yet Anthony Neuer was featured on several national news outlets converting the 7-10 split. That was interesting to see.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, July, 2021

One of the most essential of the many important things a bowler must conquer to find sustained success is lane topography. Whether they have access to topographical charts or have to figure it out by watching the ball roll down the lane (or both), bowlers have to be able to adapt to different topographical challenges from bowling center to bowling center, pair to pair and lane to lane.

The best players have an innate mastery of cartography, just as they intuitively understand every facet of complex fields like physics, meteorology and calculus. Even if players can’t necessarily explain to you why certain things are the way they are (although it’s fair to note there are those who can), they simply know it. This breeds confidence, which leads to better shots, which beget higher scores, which turn into more titles.

Partly because their knowledge is inborn but also because they don’t want to be offensive, a bowler will give you one of four very friendly answers if you ask about topography related to a specific tournament.

As a public service, here’s a handy guide translating what a bowler says about topography to what he or she really means about topography, bowling and life:

“The topography is pretty good here.”

The lanes aren’t perfectly flat, but they’re close. Any minor slants aren’t enough to negatively impact my ball too much and, most important, the lanes seem to favor my ball more than anyone else’s. I see no problems in my game and a lot of names behind mine on the leaderboard. I’m excited for round two.

“The lanes can be a little tricky.”

The lanes are legitimately pretty good throughout the house. However, they clearly favor that guy’s ball more than mine, which is unfair. Still, if I can control the pocket by consistently getting to the breakpoint and somehow get my ball to go through the pins correctly, I still have a chance, so I don’t want to complain yet. I reserve the right to complain later, though, if that guy’s ball keeps hitting valleys while I’m constantly hiking up mountains. I’m also thinking about spreading a rumor that 27-28 are tough without doing any research to see if that’s true just to get into some other guys’ heads a little bit. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

“The lanes are different pair to pair.”

This is not a fun place to bowl. I’m basically spelunking without a headlamp while these other guys have miles of visibility and just have to let go of the ball in order to strike. I have no chance to make the cut and if it weren’t for pure luck, the guys averaging 240 wouldn’t have a chance, either. It’s a mental grind no matter how much trust I have in the process. I can’t use the same ball on my next pair as I used on the previous pair and it doesn’t help that I have to follow all those high-rev-rate guys. Plus, I have to start on 27-28 tomorrow and I heard that pair is really difficult. I feel good physically though. I guess this just isn’t my week, but I’m looking forward to next week.

“Every lane is different.”

What a mess. This is the worst place I’ve ever been in my life. I knew from the first shot of practice that every lane in this house was completely different. Magellan died before his expedition fully circumnavigated the globe and it was probably because of topography like this in the Philippines. None of the lanes are flat and I have no chance at all. It’s like the lanes were built by and for the guys averaging 240. The other three bowlers on my cross are all in their first tournament and spraying shots all over the place. Plus, I lost my lucky thumb slug last night. I may withdraw from this tournament and get a couple extra days at home. In fact, I may withdraw from all the upcoming tournaments and call it a career. Then again, I did figure something out toward the end of the block. If only I had another 12 games, I think I could catch the leader.