Category: Bowlers Journal International

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, August, 2020

In June, we saw the return of the PBA on FOX with two events that not only appealed to the usual bowling audience but also enthralled casual sports fans—those who will watch any sport even if they aren’t necessarily fans of that sport. Now, perhaps, many of them are becoming bowling fans.

For existing bowling fans, the shows were fun because they were different from what we usually see and we got to watch the players showcase their talents in new ways. Plus, we hadn’t seen any live bowling in three months, so we would’ve gladly watched anything with a sanding pad.

For casual sports fans—regular people who don’t yet know the delicate intricacies of changing axis tilt to generate a slightly different ball motion—these events showcased exactly what the general public assumes pro bowlers do all day: strike constantly. A casual sports fan can’t relate to a grind-it-out, clean 190 game, but he can relate to strikes.

In the Strike Derby, competitors were each given two minutes in which to roll as many strikes as possible. Because it’s bowling, of course we had to sit through a qualifying round, but once that was over, interest picked up as the players were seeded into a bracket. Again, given two minutes each, the player with the most strikes advanced.

With no time for pre-shot routines, thumb-tape adjustments or incessant balking, the bowlers—who, one hopes, were still able to trust the process among the rapidity—were thrust into a fast-paced strikefest that was as compelling to the fans as it was exhausting to the players. Two minutes is much longer than an average NHL shift, tennis rally or football play, and most of the players hadn’t been able to bowl at all in months. Also, consider a bowling ball weighs about three times as much as a hockey stick, hockey puck, tennis racket, tennis ball and non-Patriots football combined. This was strenuous.

With the oil getting pushed around with every shot, the lanes got considerably more difficult as the players grew more fatigued. Perhaps it’s important to note the oil pattern was not arduous, but it’s also important to note only moderate-to-high-level bowlers understand the game to that extent. Casual sports fans didn’t care about the oil moving around or whether the conditions were tough; they cared about seeing who would strike the most.

In the Summer Clash, each player bowled a 10^th frame in the first round and the lowest score was eliminated. From there, the remaining field rolled one shot each, low score eliminated, until we were down to one. It wasn’t quite as brisk as the Strike Derby but it was just as immediately understandable to new viewers.

In the Strike Derby, casual sports fans saw exactly what they see in every other sport: a result every few seconds (each attempted strike), every two minutes (a player’s final score) and every four minutes (the winner of the match). In the Clash, every shot from the second round on determined if someone was in or out.

Even better: viewers could comprehend on their own what needed to happen for a player to win. That’s right, the score was decipherable. If the first guy rolled 12 strikes in the Strike Derby, the next guy needed 13 to win. If the low score in the Summer Clash was 8, the rest of the bowlers needed 9 or better to advance. This is a bit more intuitive than a novice trying to figure out what’s going on by looking at a scoreboard full of slashes and exes that claims one guy trails by 8 but has a max score 12 pins higher than his opponent.

When sports fans are given fast-paced action, frequent results and a score they can figure out without straining themselves, sports fans are engrossed.

A first-time viewer didn’t know he was supposed to assume one of the no-thumb bowlers would win the Strike Derby, but that viewer had a lot of fun watching full-thumbed and not-slow-but-certainly-not-fast Kris Prather hoist the trophy. The same viewer had no clue Sean Rash wasn’t winning his 16^th career PBA Tour title in the Summer Clash, but the image of a happy person clutching a trophy is how sporting events end.

Bowling fans got a fun reintroduction to their favorite sport. Sports fans got an approachable, comprehensible inducement into becoming bowling fans. Soon enough, they’ll be clamoring for clean 190s, too.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, July, 2020

The PBA League draft generates intrigue and excitement every year, but especially this year. Not only is the PBA League one of the most recognizable and marketable aspects of the PBA to casual sports fans (that is, those who are not already ardent bowling fans), but the PBA League draft, held on May 17 on FloBowling, was the closest thing to live bowling coverage we’d seen since the PBA World Championship on FOX more than two months prior.

The luxury of being able to simultaneously appeal to the devoted bowling audience and mainstream sports-fan audience is something the PBA is rightly unwilling to pass up.

In general, sports fans like sports drafts, particularly when they already know who the players are. The NFL and NBA drafts are popular in large part because the draft picks feature incredibly famous college students preparing to enter the workforce and fans want to see in which cities those students will earn jobs. With the PBA League, the players are already professionals and thus well known among PBA fans, allowing for hearty debates, tough choices and inevitable snubs.

This year, the natural appeal of the draft even received some coverage from mainstream, non-bowling media in addition to the intense scrutiny and in-depth analysis on all the new bowlers-talking-to-bowlers internet shows.

On the much-heralded Beef & Barnzy Show, the most popular of the bunch, Stu Williams (Beef) and (&) Chris Barnes (Barnzy) hosted 70 or 80 mock drafts leading up to the real thing, probably as a covert act devised by Barnes to create as many scenarios as possible to plan for what his team could do for real, but this is merely speculation.

Finally, after all the hype, discussions, mock drafts and predictions, the real draft happened.

Over the course of two hours, including two commercial breaks that featured no commercials, FloBowling put on a virtual draft, no easy task for a long-distance production with every possible bowler, team manager and host on standby to be inserted into the show.

As expected, the draft was full of the unexpected. Players, fans and analysts were surprised, fascinated and even outraged for some reason at some of the choices.

Amleto Monacelli, manager of the expansion Las Vegas High Rollers, was either lauded or excoriated for his roster with very few public opinions falling between. Monacelli chose François Lavoie with the first overall pick, notably passing on Sean Rash, who went second overall to Marshall Holman’s expansion Brew City Ballers.

Had Rash been selected by Las Vegas, would we have seen an Eric Lindros situation? Had Monacelli accepted a proposed trade from Silver Lake—a tidbit gleaned from manager Mark Baker by bowling pundit Phil Brylow during a panel discussion during the Beef & Barnzy post-draft show—what would that have meant for both expansion teams?

We’re quickly veering into the hypothetical, which is another reason sports fans like sports drafts: second-guessing. Whom should that team have picked? Why didn’t they take this guy when he was still on the board? Who was snubbed?

With two new teams this season, it means 10 fewer snubs. Still, we could’ve added 40 new teams and there would still be snubs.

In any endeavor with limited availability, there will be exclusions. And, just like the high-school basketball team, it’s not enough to say who was snubbed; one must also point out the person who was unfairly chosen over the snub, thereby pseudo-snubbing the unsnubbed.

Beyond the snubs and the pseudo-snubbed unsnubbed, we have the most egregious snubs: the snubs snubbed from the these-guys-were-snubbed lists. We won’t mention them here as that would only create a new list of further snubs.

We will, however, revel in some good news in the world: the PBA returned to television in June and the PBA League will be in Portland this fall to determine which post-draft roster is truly the best.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, June, 2020

“Where are you? What have you been doing? What are you binge watching?”

The first two questions are irrelevant in that the first answer is obvious and the second one is usually “binge watching,” leading to the third query, to which there’s only one correct response: “I’ve been watching 800 daily internet bowling shows in which bowlers talk to bowlers in the morning and then talk to each other again in the afternoon and then talk to each other again before bed in order to set up tomorrow’s conversations.”

The western-hemisphere bowling world has gone from bowling for 14 hours a day while others watch to talking to each other for 14 hours a day while others watch, followed by a brief break to re-oil the fiber-optic cables before bowling’s Australian correspondent checks in.

More than any other professional sport and well beyond tweeted screen shots of co-workers doing virtual happy hours, bowlers are keeping bowling conversations going despite a complete lack of actual bowling. It’s impressive to see, although it’s not shocking as bowlers have always been able to talk about bowling.

Just as bowlers have adapted to advancements in cover stocks and lane conditions, they’re now adapting to advancements in technology to entertain their fans in new ways while simultaneously marketing themselves and increasing their followings. This is smart and good for the entire game.

Long-distance communication has been around since the beginning of civilization. Using fire, smoke, flags, guns, drums and other visual or audial cues, messages relating to military directives, regime announcements or whether a fastball or changeup was coming next were able to be passed, relatively quickly and over long distances, to those who needed to know.

With the invention of the telegraph in the 18^th century and its ascent to prominence in the 19^th, bowlers were no longer limited to pre-determined signals and were able to send the first text messages, dictating exactly what they wanted to say. Instead of having to use flags to flash the old yellow-red-blue signal for someone having bowled a 300 game, people were finally able to send a telegraph: I WOULD HAVE SHOT 300 BUT MY OPPONENT DISTRACTED ME STOP

But the telegraph wasn’t good enough. People didn’t want to text each other; they wanted to talk. Along came Alexander Graham Bell’s patent in 1876. Soon after, bowlers were able to call each other and talk about their bad breaks and frustrations after first relaying their gripes to the operator.

This continued for over a century, although the operators were eventually spared, before humans decided telephones were too intrusive and they hated talking to each other and would rather go back to telegraphs. The advent of the reversion-through-advancement text message allowed bowlers to form group chats in which they could make fun of each other during qualifying blocks. Everything was wonderful.

Then, the world—even qualifying—stopped.

Suddenly deprived of human contact, everyone realized maybe communication isn’t so bad after all, but phone calls were still out of the question. As “Weird Al” Yankovic sings in “First World Problems,” “Somebody just called me up on the phone / what? / don’t they know how to text? OMG.”

Smoke signals aren’t practical with everyone locked in their underground shelters and group texts aren’t as fun without new fodder. The next natural step is to arrange live video colloquies available for anyone in the entire world with an internet connection to watch.

As is proper, bowlers are at the forefront of this movement. Just because they’re not bowling doesn’t mean they can’t have fun with and make fun of each other. And, with the added desire to see and be seen, why not skewer each other publicly so the fans can stay in touch, which should lead to increased fan engagement when the bowlers are able to compete again? And, in true bowling fashion, why not require an entire day, every day, to make it happen?

So, what are you binge watching?

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, May, 2020

It’s that time of year again: league season is over and we need to find ways to stay occupied and fight off the inevitable bowling withdrawal that hangs over the dreary summer months. Except we weren’t prepared for this. Leagues didn’t end when they were supposed to and we don’t know when they’re coming back.

In previous years, we could spend the summer watching the pros on FloBowling, BowlTV, FOX, FS1, CBSSN and YouTube. We can still do that, but for the time being, we’re limited to the classics as they re-air on TV and sit in the archives on the internet.

Summer used to be an ideal time to practice with limited distractions. Now, unless you have lanes in your house, practice is not an option. Some league bowlers like to use the summer to completely forget about bowling until Labor Day, but being forced to forget about bowling accomplishes the opposite: these people want to bowl.

World Series of Bowling XI was interrupted with three titles still to be decided. The USBC Open Championships were pushed back shortly before they were to begin. A week prior to its scheduled start, the USBC Masters was postponed. College bowling came to an end on the cusp of sectionals. Bowling centers around the world were closed until further notice.

This bout of bowling withdrawal is unlike anything we’ve felt before. We’re not merely between seasons. One season didn’t end and who knows when the next one will begin? This is bigger than bowling. We don’t know where we are. We are all Billy Pilgrim.

At the end of all this, everything in the world is going to be different, although it should be noted cashers round will remain just as compelling as it ever was.

College athletes in all sports, particularly seniors, weren’t ready for their collegiate seasons and careers to end. The lack of closure these athletes are getting on their sporting and academic careers is—to use a bowling word—unfair. They’ll be fine, though. As disenchanted as many of them are, they’re humans who will cope with it in time.

Still, college bowling itself will change. When it finally returns, will the athletes be less inclined to high-five each other after every shot? And, without incessant high-fiving, is it really college bowling?

Pro bowlers will be happy to be rid of the perceived need to high-five opponents but may be slightly more weary about cramming 14 people into a room on the road. Players whose pre-shot routines involve licking their hands and rubbing their shoes might want to consider using this time off the lanes to develop new pre-shot routines.

At the amateur and recreational level, think of the poor sandbaggers. They were just a week or two away from finally performing up to their real capabilities when it was all ripped out from under them. Six months of whiffing 4-pins and for what? For nothing. Important note: it’s always for nothing. The only good thing about the abrupt end to league season is the sandbaggers didn’t get their undeserved glory.

Amid all the upcoming changes to the entire sport, at least we can take comfort in knowing some things will remain the same. Staying six feet apart from each other shouldn’t be tough as bowlers have always yielded to somebody 40 lanes down for being too close. Live-stream commentators will continue to self-isolate 14 hours a day in the back corner, only leaving their cubbies for essential purposes like configuring a camera for a rolloff. Bowling bags will remain the size of walk-in closets and ball selection will still be paramount.

Unfortunately, nobody knows when we’ll get back to these familiar comforts. Bowlers bowl. Without bowling, what do we do now?

To bowlers, the course of action is intuitive. All we can do is—yes—trust the process. Even if we have no idea what the process is.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2020

As we enter April, leaving behind an inexplicable obsession with college basketball (that keeps going into April despite being named after March) and moving into an inexplicable obsession with professional baseball (that begins in March and now only exists so people can enjoy an astronomical level of schadenfreude), we’re reminded of how simple sports are.

Play two halves; most points wins. Play nine innings; most runs wins. Entire field bowls 16 qualifying games over two eight-game blocks with the top 40 plus the next eight players aged 60 or above advancing to a third day of competition, opening with those players qualifying 25^th and below plus the additional eight 60-year-olds wiping their scores and playing five more games of qualifying, with the top eight advancing to the first round of match play, where they’ll be joined by players qualifying 9^th-24^th, again dropping all existing scores, bowling five modified round-robin matches, the last of which is a position round, with the top eight based on cumulative totals plus 30 additional pins for each match victory emerging to compete in the second round of match play where those players qualifying first through eighth await, this time bowling six modified match-play games, the last of which is a position round, and the top five based on cumulative scores including 30 bonus pins per win move into the stepladder finals, the fourth seed bowls a one-game match against the fifth seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the third seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the second seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the first seed for the championship, most pins wins.

Simple and intuitive, but never to be explained again.

That’s right: the Matrix of Fairness is no more. In its four years of existence, the Matrix of Fairness did its job, straddling the line between everyone-has-a-chance and you-still-can’t-beat-Walter Ray. Its beauty lied in its absurdity, its integrity held in place by the immense talent of some of the greatest to ever play the game.

And now, just as its name has permeated the bowling lexicon, we’re dropping its pins. No word yet if a format aged 60 or older will be taking over, but the Matrix of Fairness will be missed.

It’ll be missed for its stunning ability to avoid rolloffs more often than not despite an opportunity for 95 or so of them in a single day. It’ll be fondly remembered for its legitimately compelling position rounds as so many of the players were mathematically involved until the final shot. Many will reminisce about the only two times a player made it all the way from the cashers round to the title (Brian LeClair and Walter Ray Williams Jr.). No one will forget how the short blocks made the best in the world immediately shift into their otherworldly greatness gear, making them unbeatable no matter how many games were being bowled. A true study in athletic excellence could be done on this alone.

Most of all, it will be missed for its fairness.

While the Matrix of Fairness deserves to be mourned, we must look forward to the good things to come: the PBA50 Tour is coming back this month and it still features some of the best to have ever played the game. And, no matter the format, someone will win every event. Not only that, but the PWBA Tour returns this month as do the PBA Playoffs in addition to league championships being earned around the world.

Forget about college basketball and forget about professional baseball. Bowling season gets even stronger this month. And, if all goes well, it’ll do so with the utmost fairness.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, March, 2020

The stories you are about to read are perfectly true as of March 1, 2020.

During match play at the Hall of Fame Classic in January, Darren Tang tied a PBA record by rolling two 300 games in a 7-game block. This is not as impressive as Charlie Standish’s record of three 300s in a 6-game block but, if given one more game, could Tang have tied Dave D’Entremont’s record of three 300s in an 8-game block? The next game Tang bowled at that event was the championship match, where there was a 300 bowled. By Tommy Jones.

Sean Rash is the only bowler to roll two televised 300 games in PBA title events, making him the only player to be officially credited with two 300s. Wes Malott is the only one to roll two televised 300s in non-title events. Ryan Shafer is the only player to claim one of each: a perfect game in a title event and another in an exhibition.

Jones is the only person to roll 1 1/6 300 games, one for a title and the other being two of 12 strikes in PBA League Baker competition. Norm Duke was the anchor on that Dallas Strikers team and also owns an individual televised 300, making Duke the only player to roll 1 1/3 perfect games. Both Duke and Jones were paid 1/5 of the bonus money for their respective 1/3 and 1/6 contributions to the Baker 300. Dom Barrett is the only man to roll a televised 300 game that only required 10 strikes in a non-title event, for which he was paid the full bonus.

For a while, Jason Queen wasn’t credited with a televised 300 at all as he accomplished the feat in the semifinal match at the 1997 USBC Masters, which at the time wasn’t a PBA Tour event (nor was it the USBC Masters; it was the ABC Masters). The following year, the PBA began recognizing the event—Parker Bohn III rolled 300 on TV that year and received immediate credit—but didn’t retroactively award title credit to prior winners until 2008 (assuming the prior winners were PBA members at the time of their victories, and Queen was not).

In the decision of 2008, although Queen was not awarded a PBA title, he was retroactively recognized as the 19^th person to be credited with a televised 300. He was slotted chronologically as the 11^th to do it, but since he wasn’t a PBA member when he actually rolled the 12 strikes, he became the only player in history to roll a televised PBA 300 game as an amateur. Incidentally, Queen was a PBA member in 2008 and won two PBA Midwest Regional titles that year to complement his retroactive perfect game.

The 11 years between Queen’s achievement and recognition led to the commentators of the next eight televised 300 games to be “wrong” in retrospect, telling fans the players were going for the 11^th through 18^th televised perfect games in history, which was true at the time but still causes confusion among YouTube commenters when they see #14 in the title and hear #13 in the video. Steve Hoskins, Bohn, Steve Jaros, Mike Miller, Duke, Mika Koivuniemi, Tony Reyes and Shafer were all bumped back one spot in the timeline. In the 2009 Dydo Japan Cup, Rhino Page rolled the 20^th televised perfect game to get us back into a consistent order while also becoming the only player ever to roll a televised PBA 300 outside the United States… unless you count Chris Barnes, who rolled 300 in the semifinal match of the 2015 DHC PBA Japan Invitational, but that was on Xtra Frame rather than TV. Pay attention to this one; it could be the next to retroactively reorder things.

The 21^st televised 300 game belongs to Jason Belmonte, even though the man who bowled the 22^nd—Barnes—actually rolled his before Belmonte in real time. Barnes shot 300 in the 2012 Shark Open, which was taped the night before Belmonte rolled 300 in the PBA World Championship—with Barnes doing guest commentary and having to laugh off Rob Stone’s brilliant Barnes-needling exclamation, “Finally, I’ve seen a 300 game”—but Barnes’s perfect game didn’t air until almost two months after Belmonte’s and is thus listed as the 22^nd ever rolled.

That same weekend, Belmonte won the Players Championship, which wasn’t counted as a major until four years later, causing Belmonte’s first major to become his sixth major. Or his sixth major to become his first major. But what about his second major that used to be his first major? Semi-related: is Major Major Major Major the greatest character name in literary history?

To summarize: Jack Biondolillo bowled the first televised 300 game in PBA history.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, February, 2020

There are a lot of things worth boasting about in the sport of bowling: a deft adjustment, the perfect combination of speed and angles, an unflappable performance under pressure, the fact that if you’d only not whiffed 43 single pins and left 13 ringing 10s in a row, you definitely would’ve made the cut.

Some things, though, aren’t worthy of bragging. At the top of that list: getting the score right.

Because bowling scoring is so fluid, it takes a lot of brainpower to be able to determine what the cut score is going to be, especially during position round with multiple players and 30 bonus pins per match involved. Thus, it seems like it might be a prideful moment to know the score. If so, that pride should remain internal. “I got the score right” should never be uttered.

Of course we should get the score right. It’s a sport. Sports have scores. Just because bowling’s scoring system isn’t inherently understood by laymen doesn’t mean we need to point that out to everyone.

As the players get into the seventh frame of the final game of match play, murmuring throughout the bowling center is full of more conditions than a U.S. Open oil-pattern schedule. “If he strikes here, but that guy spares, then the other guy doubles while the fourth guy fouls, then all the fifth guy needs to do is strike out and he makes it, which will also put the third guy into the special-event points cut but still not inside the special-event money cut, which would go to the sixth guy… if he doesn’t split and the seventh guy loses to the eighth guy.”

Anyone who can do all that math at that precise moment is impressive, but it’s all moot when the first guy opens, at which point a whole new set of conditions enter the conversation.

Is there any other sport in which knowing the score is something to brag about? Perhaps sports like figure skating or gymnastics might qualify, but anything with a judged score is subjective. Unless you’re an actual judge, you’re merely guessing at what the scores might be.

Bowling is objective so there should be no guessing involved: a strike is 10 plus the next two shots, a spare is 10 plus the next shot and an open frame is the actual value of the pinfall in that frame, all added together over the course of 10 frames, including one or two fill balls if necessary, plus 30 bonus pins if we’re playing that way, then contrasted against the rest of the field who are all bowling simultaneously before being manually recorded and cross-checked against the computer. Could anything be simpler?

It is important to know the score. The players need to know what it will take to make the cut and the fans need to know which shots are important during those exciting final moments.

But when we brag about knowing the score, all we’re doing is calling attention to the fact that most human beings have no idea what’s going on until someone announces the top five.

Because of the indecipherable pandemonium, the chaos of position round is uniquely wonderful to bowling. Nobody at a basketball game is saying, “The Pistons are down by two points, but if they make a three-pointer here, they’ll be ahead by one.” Everybody already knows that. Then, when the game ends, fans are either happy their team won or unhappy their team lost, but no one is crowing about having known the score.

In bowling, although most can determine the score of each player’s game, making sense of the cut-line bedlam is accessible only to an elite few. Those few have reputations and commensurate audiences waiting to hear who made the cut. It’s an impressive ability, but it’s not for bragging. It’s a sport; everyone should know the score.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, January, 2020

Welcome to The One Board’s fourth annual year-start countup, freeing us from the incessant year-end recaps and moving into the year ahead with anticipation and zeal. As always, all 20 reasons to be excited for the upcoming year involve bowling.

1. A coach tries to revolutionize bowling by convincing bowlers only to focus on the outcome, ignoring the process. He is immediately exiled.
2. Somebody shoots his first 299 in league. Rather than give the guy the one pin he didn’t knock down, the proprietor gives him the 119 he did knock down. He has trouble explaining to his friends why 119 equals 299 and even more trouble explaining to his wife why 119 bowling pins need to go on the mantel. She compromises by allowing the pins to go in the fireplace rather than on it.
3. After a controversial finish in the PBA Oklahoma Open championship match in which a pinsetter hit (or didn’t hit) a desperately needed 10-pin, the PBA institutes video review—starting the following week—to eliminate all future controversy.
4. The race to 20 titles between Chris Barnes and Tommy Jones ends anti-climactically when they team up to win the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship on February 29.
5. To break the tie, the newly introduced video review is used to determine whether Barnes or Jones physically touch the trophy first. The only thing officials can definitively rule is that the call goes against the Detroit Lions.
6. The race is on to 21.
7. Live telecasts run over their allotted time every week due to video review. Most reviews deal not with opponents challenging each other on fouls or pinfall, but rather the players challenging fans on the grounds of distractions.
8. The important thing is to get it right.
9. For the 62^nd consecutive year, an immeasurable number of people are referred to as great guys.
10. In April, François Lavoie wins his third U.S. Open. Two more U.S. Opens are added—one in June and the other in September to coincide with quarterly tax deadlines—and Lavoie wins both of those too.
11. Major League Baseball prints huge banners for each team to hang at the entrance to their stadiums: “Welcome, baseball players.”
12. During PBA League competition, a player challenges the fans, claiming a non-distraction became a distraction when the usually rowdy crowd got silent for a moment. After video review, the player is awarded a strike and the fans are issued vuvuzelas.
13. In a groundbreaking ruling, bowlers are allowed to remember every title they’ve ever won, even if they were wearing a different logo at the time.
14. The most popular documentary on Netflix, “Matrix of Fairness,” ends its six-episode run unsatisfactorily, leading to outrage from viewers. The filmmakers couldn’t figure out the Matrix of Fairness and gave up trying. Viewers under 60 are left confused and wanting more. Viewers 60 and over are issued checks for $1,000.
15. Shannon O’Keefe, not slowing down at all from her amazing 2019 season, wins the first 10 PWBA Tour events. Regardless, going into the 11^th event, we start all our sentences with, “If (insert player doing well) can win this one, then the next one, then the last two, we might have a race for Player of the Year.”
16. Jason Belmonte wins the fourth U.S. Open of the year to finally complete the Super Slam. Completely fulfilled with his career, he retires, which makes his fans sad until he amends his decision to semi-retirement, vowing to continue bowling the majors, which means we’ll still see him 33 times in 2021.
17. The best Halloween costume of the year goes to Lanny, a third-grader who dresses as a bowling ball. His father, dressed as Jim Callahan, makes Lanny change costumes every five houses.
18. In November, the PBA rules against the existence of February 29, saying it complicates matters, thereby erasing the 20^th title for both Jones and Barnes. We’re instructed to pretend the event never happened.
19. Barnes and Jones file an appeal, but the officials can’t find the tapes and instead award another U.S. Open title to Lavoie, giving him a record six in his career.
20. FOX ratings, FloBowling and BowlTV subscriptions reach all-time highs. People are watching bowling. Hours and hours of bowling.

Happy 2020, bowling fans. We wish you happiness, prosperity and more games in the new year.

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.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2019

Since 1958, professional bowling has boasted the accessibility of its athletes as one of its greatest assets. In no other professional sport can a fan attend an event and expect—not just hope, but truly expect—to meet his or her idols. Bowling fans know with certainty they can get any autograph they want, take photos with legends and even cull bowling tips from the absolute best.

The bowlers always happily oblige. In many cases, fans feel like they’re gaining new friends rather than simply having a quick celebrity encounter. The astounding accessibility of pro bowlers has to be a positive, right?

Maybe not.

In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell investigates things perceived as advantages that eventually become disadvantages.

Gladwell says more money means more happiness to a certain amount, at which point contentment plateaus and then begins to decrease. Also, when school class size shrinks from 30 to 18, the students do better, but once the class dwindles to 12 or fewer, the students actually do worse. Essentially, he’s saying too much of a good thing can lead to a bad result.

Sadly, there’s one glaring omission from Gladwell’s research: the accessibility of professional bowlers. Right here in our own sport, we have too much of a good thing.

It’s unquestionably good that you can walk into a PBA event and get an autograph from Jason Belmonte, have your picture taken with Jason Sterner and ask Jason Couch why there are so many Jasons. With very few exceptions, every bowler you approach is going to be friendly and give you a reason to come back and root for him. Pro-ams and practice days are amazing opportunities for fans and players to interact.

However, the culture of accessibility has become so strong that it’s hard to distinguish appropriate times (pro-ams) from inappropriate times (the 10^th frame of a possible 300 game) to interact with players.

Unlike other sports, pro bowlers are never separated from fans. As a fan, you park your car next to EJ Tackett. You find yourself in line ahead of Bill O’Neill at the snack bar. You visit the facilities next to Sean Rash.

You won’t find LeBron James at the snack bar. You’re not allowed in Mookie Betts’s parking lot (unless he’s bowling). If you’re caught visiting the facilities in an NHL locker room, you’re going to jail.

These things detract from the mystique of the professional athlete and lower the prestige of professional bowling. It’s less awe-striking for a fan to meet a player in these situations and a player doesn’t want to be met while he’s preparing for or in the middle of competition (and certainly not while he’s visiting the facilities).

Granted, most sports have arenas and stadiums specifically built for professionals with private areas for the players. Since bowlers compete inside real, functioning businesses, the logistics of separating players from fans is difficult. More than the actual physical separation, though, is the perception of prestige.

When a player is feeding dollar bills into the vending machine, he doesn’t quite exude the aura of celebrity. When a player fries out in the locker room, fans should not be able to witness it.

Unlimited accessibility doesn’t only hurt the bowlers; it hurts the fans, too.

Consider this hypothetical situation based on countless real situations: a professional finishes a bad block and wants nothing more than to retreat to the locker room and loathe himself. He can’t get there without fans asking for photos and autographs. He’s not in the most pleasant state of mind and, while he’d normally indulge the requests, now isn’t the time. The fans sense—maybe even receive—his attitude and now they have a bad impression of him. The immense accessibility creates a bad experience for the player and the fans.

The accessibility of the pros is and should remain one of bowling’s best assets, but perhaps we should scale it back a bit. A little less access makes fan encounters even more special, both for the fans and the players.