I pulled a back-to-back this week. After bowling last weekend in Tampa, I decided to come back out and give it a shot this weekend as well.
I got to Lakeland on Friday afternoon, about 4 minutes before the practice session started (great timing on leaving the house before a 3 1/2 hour drive, no?). We bowled on PBA Pattern A this weekend. It's one of the shorter patterns, and combined with the wooden lanes, the oil did tricks on the lane during the whole weekend. But I will get to that later. I brought 9 balls plus a plastic with me. I didn't anticipate needing only one ball this week as I knew it would be one of the tougher patterns rather than Pattern B or E. The lanes change much, plus the backends are VERY sharp at the get-go. Accuracy is at a premium when the backends are so touchy, and you really have to attack the lanes the right way.
I tried playing outside, near the first arrow for some of practice. I've been working on throwing the ball straighter and making it roll out into the pocket in anticipation of a pattern like this, however the lanes were all very different from lane to lane and I couldn't find a consistent reaction, angle and release that I knew I could count on. I moved deep inside and found something that seemed to work well around the 18 board, going out to about 6 at the breakpoint. Oddly enough, the ball that worked best from this big hook angle was the same one, the ICON 300, that I used last weekend on the 42 foot long pattern. This ball is turning out to be one of the most versatile I've thrown (not that I'm complaining).
Friday night I was assigned to bowl the 8PM Pro-Am squad; my first Pro-Am as a PBA member. I was excited and nervous - I didn't want to let anyone down by bowling bad, but I knew that I was going to have a good time just having fun with the people there so it was easy to relax. We bowled a 9-pin no-tap 3-6-9 format so it went pretty quick. I shot 279 the first game and the people on the pair didn't want me to leave :) I shot 235 and 243 afterwards, so I was pretty happy with my bowling. I threw lots of good shots, plus I converted the 6-7-9-10 split - the fans and pro-am participants loved that :) I later found out that the man who won the pro-am was one of the people who was on my lane the first game - I was happy to have helped him win. I think he said he won $500 for the effort. Not a bad haul, eh?
I had the A squad Saturday morning. The lanes started off much the same way they started off during practice, so I immediately moved inside with my ICON 300 and played the big hook. It seemed to work well and I started out with 214. I have a nasty habit of starting off slow so I was happy to put up a solid game. Plus I knew the scores would be low as the previous times I've bowled on Pattern A the cuts have been minus something (can't remember what) and +30.
The lanes began to change almost immediately. I didn't need to move too much, only a board here and a board there. I knew where I neeed to throw the ball to get to the pocket. That wasn't the problem. The problem became getting a consistent reaction on good shots. The carry was very good for the most part, and lots of bad shots struck, however there were lots of times where off my hand, the ball felt great and looked great going downlane, but it didn't read the breakpoint and left 2-10 combinations. This made moving from pair to pair tricky, as I said each lane was different. What was most difficult was generating any momentum. I saw very few strings of strikes all day, as many others seemed to haev the same problem as I.
I ended up shooting a very solid block for such tough lanes: minus 34. I only shot two games lower than 190 (180 and 188), however the rest of my games were mostly in the 190's and 200's. Without the ability to put up a 220 or 230 game, I couldn't make up the pins I needed to get close to making the top 24 cut for Sunday.
The cut ended up at +9, which was about 20 pins lower than I had thought it would be. For some reason, the B squad bowlers didn't score very well. Many of the best bowlers in the region like Dave D'Entremont, Jason Couch, Patrick Allen, Norm Titus didn't cash. This shoudl tell you how tricky the lanes really were.
I was in 27th place after the A squad and the cash cut was 45th place. I didn't think I had a chance, but since the B bowled poorly in general, it put me right on the bubble. The cash cut ended up at minus 36 so I cashed by two pins!! In my opinion, considering my struggles to strike, I was happy, but on the flipside, i threw the ball well for most of the day and with a little luck I know I could have made it to plus 9.
This makes three cashes this year in three regionals that I've bowled. Last year I think I cashed in three regionals out of six events, so I'm definitely making progress, especially since I think the South Region is much tougher than the Southwest Region that I bowled in last year.
I'm taking the next month off from Regionals. They are mostly in the northern part of the region and I am not about to drive there myself, so I'll wait until they come back to Florida at the end of May. You can check PBA.com's South region section for information on where my region will be - come down and watch!!!
Posted by at April 13, 2003 07:53 PM