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Bowling News USA - November 6, 2009 The Schlemer Report (2009 World Series of Bowling)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, fans of all ages, welcome back to yet another season of insight from the PBA tour as told by me, your tour guide, Chris Schlemer. As many of you may or may not know, the PBA chose a little different approach to start the 09-10 season this year. In an effort to lower expenses during these tough economic times, they decided to borrow a concept from the poker world and created what they called the WSOB or World Series of Bowling. There is no doubt this concept saved money and made things easier, however by holding six consecutive events in one center, it may have cost some players their careers. The PBA still has one event coming up in Wichita in December and twelve more starting in January. Some players didn’t fare so well in August and will have to make a strong charge the second half of the season.

Meanwhile back at the ranch… It’s early November and we have completed seven events on this season’s schedule. Technically, we are only through six weeks because the PBA World Championship show has yet to be completed. This show will be bowled LIVE in Wichita on December 13th. The PBA did this much like the final table in the World Series of Poker, where they used the months from September until November to create excitement and promote the World Championship show. You may have seen various publications and ads with Storm’s very own Rhino Page and reigning PBA Player of the Year, Roto Grip’s Wes Malott alongside Bill O’Neill and Tom Smallwood. These four will battle it out in Wichita for the first major of the 2009-2010 season. Only time will tell how well this concept has worked.

On October 25th the PBA kicked off their season’s telecasts by airing the taped show of the Senior & Women’s World Championships. If you tuned in that first week you witnessed Harry “The Legend” Sullins win his first major Senior PBA title over Hugh Miller and Kelly Kulick took home the hardware on the women’s side. And as you may have noticed both Sullins and Miller used Utah balls in the title match; Miller used a Virtual Gravity and a Hy-Road, while Sullins used a stacked Cell Pearl. In fact, the Cell Pearl Sullins used never even went down the lane in qualifying. During the week he used a Hy-Road, original Furious, Cell along with a few others. He brought the Cell Pearl from home just for the show as we discussed how the lanes might play during the taping of their title match. The World Championship pattern was forty-one feet in length with a heavy volume of oil. During the week, solid covers with a little surface were the choice of most, while some used pearl covers with a little extra surface. Ball choices depended on the bowler’s roll and ball speed. However all of these factors were trumped for the TV shows due to the old beat up high friction lane surface in the arena bay where all the shows were taped.

On November 1st the first show of the six taped shows was aired. This event was yet another unique one. The Motor City Open event was bowled at Taylor Lanes and the finals were taped at Thunderbowl Lanes. The centers are about ten miles apart. The other interesting tidbit about this event was that qualifying was bowled August 3rd-6th and the finals were then taped on September 5th. Yes, that is four weeks time frame if you look at a calendar, or as I referred to it as an entire month.

PDW bowled a great match for using balls that he never even threw in competition over at Taylor Lanes. In fact, the pin down, big extra hole down Hy-Road and a pin up, hole on axis Furious he used on that show weren’t even in his bag yet when he bowled qualifying over at Taylor the month prior. Unfortunately for Pete, he caught O’Neill at the wrong time with the lane transition. But O’Neill looked like he hadn’t thrown a shot all day in his next match against Barnes. The scores were a roller coaster of sorts, from 230s to 160s every other game. This was partially due to the rev rates of the guys on the show and which balls they chose to use, but mainly the reason for the confusion was largely in part due to the lane surface. Not to mention stripping and running the lanes with different patterns and oils as well as the lights for TV. Let’s just say as you sit back and watch the remainder of the taped shows over the next five weeks you will see plenty more confused looks and reactions from the best players in the world.

Without giving too much away in the likes of results, let’s just say that Storm picked up where they left off last season. In the coming weeks you will see the likes of Norm Duke, Rhino Page and Liz Johnson doing what they do best. You’ll also see some free agents using Storm and Roto Grip as they get in on the fun and make things exciting!

Be sure to tune in November 8th for the Cheetah Championship. It will be a new twist in the way of a bowling telecast. This show was taped in a documentary format, so you will see clips from the practice day, through the event and all the way to the title match between Norm Duke using a Second Dimension and Ryan Ciminelli using a Natural. I promise, you won’t be disappointed!

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