INTERNET BOWLING PERSONALITY

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.

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

Anyone who has ever held a video camera (or cell phone, which is strangely named after the least-used feature of the device) in a bowling center has been accused of being a jinx. Anyone who has ever had the front nine, 10 or 11 strikes before failing has accused someone with a camera of being a jinx.

The cameraman jinx accusations are most rampant at the top levels of the sport—the PBA and PWBA—in which human beings are employed to capture footage of the best players in the world performing at their best.

Bowling fans and even casual sports fans like to see the 10^th frame of a perfect game. Video people like to capture good content, particularly since their job is to create good content fans want to see. Hence, a person with a camera hits record as a player steps up in the 10^th, three strikes from perfection. Everyone involved wants to see those three strikes.

The video person, fully knowledgeable of the potentially looming jinx-related allegations, tries to be covert as he approaches the player, even if every step yields another kindhearted joke from a fan about how this poor schlub is going to ruin a perfect game.

The player strikes on the first shot in the 10^th. He walks back to the ball return, glancing up ever so briefly but long enough to catch a glimpse of the cameraman. The player’s eyes immediately dart away, but he knows the camera is there. Worse, the cameraman now knows the bowler knows he’s there. On the 11^th shot, the player rolls his best attempt of the day but leaves a devastating stone 8. Next: blame the now divagating cameraman, who is already being showered with boos by the surrounding fans (many of whom, by the way, were also recording the final frame on their video cameras that can make phone calls).

Formerly, my argument against the asinine cameraman jinx was simple: there are no jinxes. It’s just that it’s harder to roll 10 strikes in a row than nine, 11 than 10 and 12 than 11.

Now, though, I know better. It is a jinx. However, it’s not a cameraman jinx; it’s a bowler jinx. It happens when the bowler glances—even for a microsecond—into the camera lens.

The innocent cameraman is trying to give bowling fans some excitement. He wants nothing more than to capture a perfect game by one of the best players in existence, then share that perfect game with bowling fans all over the world, spreading joy and cheer to those who couldn’t be there in person as well as a chance to relive the moment for those who were there.

Then, just as the cameraman is about to complete his masterpiece, the bowler stumbles over himself, throws a terrible shot and leaves a 3-6-10 for a 297, completely ruining the cameraman’s day because, as we all know, 297 is the worst score a bowler can post after rolling the first 11 strikes. 299 at least comes with excitement and hope until the bitter end of the shot. 298 is pretty boring as no one wants to look at an 8-count in any situation. 296 is usually a hilariously bad shot that took all the drama out of the result by the time the ball reached the arrows. 295 and below is simply hysterical as well as notable for its rarity. But 297 is atrocious, and now this poor cameraman has footage of it, all because the bowler jinxed him and refused to roll that last strike.

If the bowler hadn’t been there, surely the cameraman would’ve been able to capture the 300.

Bowlers: please stop jinxing cameramen. All they want to do is see you roll 300. Don’t glance at their cameras. Trust the process, take it one shot at a time and, for the love of thumb-tape adjustments, please strike 12 times in a row.

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

It’s time all schools finally incorporate the great sport of bowling into the classroom. Introductory physics classes address things like force (which equals mass times acceleration), momentum (mass times velocity) and friction (a more complicated but equally invigorating formula), but students are never given real-life examples and thus don’t retain the information as well as they otherwise could.

Currently, students are being asked things like: how long will it take this non-descript, two-dimensional square, traveling at 3 meters per second along another indecipherable surface with a coefficient of friction of .5, to come to a complete stop?

Who cares?

Nobody can relate to that. Schools need to start using real-world examples. Instead of two-dimensional squares, let’s use three-dimensional spheres. Instead of indecipherable surfaces with consistent friction, let’s use 60 feet of high-pressure laminate, otherwise known as HPL. Oh, and let’s pile some oil—of varying volumes—on top of those 60 feet, changing the coefficient of friction throughout the entire distance. And, instead of the sphere traveling at a consistent speed, let’s make sure it is at its maximum speed right at the beginning, but then decelerates (or negatively accelerates, if you prefer) as it moves over the 60-foot surface with ever-changing friction. Plus, instead of a boring linear-traveling sphere, let’s roll it out to the right at first and watch it turn back to the left as it moves along the surface.

At some point, maybe 34 feet down the HPL, let’s remove the oil altogether, except for a few stray strands that were left behind from the previous class’s example that involved urethane spheres. Getting rid of the oil will suddenly create much more friction while the sphere continues to decelerate.

Still not real enough, we’ll probably need to make this sphere rotate, so let’s assume a 65-degree axis (to keep things simple), around which the ball will rotate 350 times per minute, because for some reason we’re going to measure it by the minute when it really only takes a few seconds to make it all 60 feet.

Thinking further, why limit it to 60 feet? Let’s add another few feet with no defined rule for how long it exactly needs to be, then litter that additional portion (let’s call it a deck) with 10 oddly shaped objects, nine of which are arranged in an equilateral triangle and one of which is in the middle of that triangle, forming several smaller-but-still-equilateral triangles with its neighbors.

Now, we’re finally ready to teach physics. Instead of a tiresome question about a square on a line at a constant speed with constant friction, we come to this question:

How long will it take a 15-pound sphere to travel 60 + x feet, where x equals an undefined distance, while decelerating and being resisted by varying coefficients of friction, spinning 350 times per minute over its own 65-degree axis, then smashing into 10 objects storing potential energy and traveling through and deflecting off those objects based on their respective forces and momentums?

Finally, some relatable content.

Of course, there’s a flaw in the question itself. We shouldn’t be asking how long it will take for the sphere to travel an undefined distance. Rather, we should be asking how many of those objects are going to be knocked down. And, if less than 10, what do we need to change in order to make it 10? The speed of the sphere? The direction? The acceleration at the point of impact? The axis tilt? The revolutions per minute? Don’t even consider changing the HPL or the location of the oil—those are not variables (except when they are).

Students: don’t forget to show your work. The best possible score on your physics test is 300.

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

Traditionally, August is the slowest month for bowling. It’s hot, league season ended three months ago and everyone is trying to cram as much summer into their lives as possible before league season begins again in September.

For some, this means digging the three-ball roller out of the basement for the first time since May in the hopes of getting a few practice frames in before they count in September. For others, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get in almost unlimited distraction-free practice as bowling centers typically have more open lanes this time of year.

August is also a time to reflect on our previous season and look ahead to the 2019-2020 league season. What are your goals? Here are a few resolutions we should all make:

Watch More Bowling

To prepare for the upcoming season, why not watch the best in the world ply their trade? Unlike other pro sports that force us to watch months of meaningless games before the finals, bowling only asks us to watch days of meaningless games before the finals. Then, once the finals culminate with an exciting finish, another tournament starts almost immediately.

This year, in the allegedly slow month of August, professional bowling is almost non-stop. There are three PBA50 events, four PWBA events and seven PBA Tour events taking place in August, all of which are being streamed live in their entireties, either on FloBowling or BowlTV. And those are just the professional tours. Other live streams of non-professional events are out there as well as local tournaments you can watch in person.

Watching more bowling will get you excited for your own upcoming season and watching the best in the world might even help improve your game.

Give Humans a Little of the Credit

Even if your league’s average leader has access to more equipment, whether it’s free, discounted or easily afforded by his or her vast net worth, give the human a little credit as well. Just having equipment doesn’t mean automatic success. Knowing which ball to roll and when is a skill. Even if someone’s arsenal is more robust than yours, don’t let resentment ruin your league season. Instead, let your season be ruined by the guy who is never ready when it’s his turn because he has to win another stuffed animal in the crane game.

Be a Part of Being Apart From

Bowlers, particularly those with staff contracts, like to express gratitude on social media. This is good, because people should be grateful for their opportunities. However, too often, bowlers will be grateful for “being apart of such a great company.” We know what they mean, but what they’re actually saying is the opposite, so it’s important to fix this seemingly insignificant grammatical faux pas, even if it’s also a faux pas to use French as part of everyday English (except in Août).

Being a part of a great company is an honor to represent their products. Being apart from a great company is what happens next year when you become a part of a different great company.

Move

When your ball isn’t hitting the pocket or when it is hitting the pocket but not striking, move. If you shot 800 standing in that spot last week it doesn’t mean you should stand there every week. All it means is you were standing in the right spot last week. Find this week’s spot. Even on a house shot, oil moves, different bowlers are on the lanes and things are different from week to week. Being too stubborn means the human with the unlimited equipment will beat you every week.

Have Fun

Believe it: it’s possible to have fun while bowling. While it’s easier to have fun when doing well, it’s conceivable to have fun even when bowling poorly, especially if you’re in a low-to-no-stakes league. There’s no reason to ruin your entire evening because you can’t strike. It’s Crane Game Guy’s job to ruin the evening and he’s doing it flawlessly.

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

It’s a well-known fact no bowler has ever gotten a good break, despite the other well-known fact that all bowlers’ opponents—who are also bowlers—have been graced with nothing but good breaks since the inception of the sport. Never mind those statements being mutually exclusive; they’re both true and everyone knows it.

In the interest of public civility, bowlers have come to an unspoken agreement that allows them to silently stew over their own bad breaks and their opponents’ good breaks while publicly attributing all perceived luck as being completely acceptable because “things even out.”

The concept of breaking even is so common in bowling that players enter tournaments only after having done the math to determine where they need to finish in the standings to pay for their lodging, food and other travel expenses. Breaking even is a good thing. Finishing any higher and cashing a larger check is a bonus.

“If I stay in this hotel room for two nights, split the cost with my roommate, eat nothing and finish 30^th, I break even,” says Bowler A. “Things even out.”

Once Bowler A gets to the tournament and makes match play, guaranteeing a 24^th-or-better finish, he has a lead over an opponent in the sixth frame and can gain a nearly insurmountable advantage with a strike in the seventh. He rolls what appears to be a perfect shot, but leaves a devastating stone eight.

After the opponent mounts a bit of a comeback, Bowler A sends a terrible shot down the lane but luckily rolls a 2-pin in the 10^th frame to clinch the victory.

“No, that wasn’t a great shot,” says Bowler A, “but that one in the seventh was the best one I threw all night and that should’ve struck. Things even out.”

Now, consider Bowler B, who qualified third for the stepladder finals. He won all three matches on TV and claimed the title by defeating Bowler C, who led the field by 300 pins into the stepladder finals and fell victim to the have-to-win-the-tournament-twice maxim.

“Yeah, Bowler C probably deserved to win this week,” says Bowler B. “But I led last week and finished second, so this kind of makes up for that. Things even out.”

Fun fact: almost every pro bowler who has won multiple times can tell you immediately how many tournaments he or she led, how many of those he or she won and how many he or she won from any position below first on the stepladder. Things even out.

These types of break-even scenarios are happening all over the bowling center throughout every round of competition.

It starts with eight games from A squad on day one. Then eight more from B squad. Then another eight from C squad. Then an exact copy of day one (aside from the ordering of the squads, of course) on day two. And another exact copy on day three. Throw in a couple more days of match play and the life has been sucked out of everyone within a 100-kilometer radius.

Finally, at the end of the fifth day, we get to the 104^th game of coverage: position round. Eight players still battling for five spots and all bowling right next to each other. The players run out their strikes, yell triumphantly after good shots and make it known to their competitors they are going to earn one of those spots on the TV show. For 10 frames, there are no friends and no pleasantries.

The competition is intense. The action is captivating. The fans are delirious with excitement and their cheers are deafening. This is a true spectacle of a sporting event and it’s all going to come down to the 10^th frame to determine who makes it to the show.

Things almost even out.

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

Lost in all the hubbub last month about his TaylorMade P7TW irons with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts, 9-degree M5 460 driver modified with a Mitsubishi Diamana D+ White Board 73TX shaft, 13-degree M5 3-wood with 83TX shaft, 19-degree M3 5-wood with 83TX shaft, Milled Grind wedges with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts, Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS putter and Bridgestone Tour B XS golf balls was the fact that Tiger Woods won his 15^th career major golf championship at The Masters.

Also last month, in Bowlers Journal’s World Series of Bowling coverage, we discussed Jason Belmonte’s record-breaking 11^th major bowling championship. Comparing him to greats from other sports, we referenced Woods’s 14 majors as he chases Jack Nicklaus’s record 18.

Two days after the issue went to the printers, leaving no room for changes, Woods won his 15^th major. He hadn’t won a major in 11 years and opted to break that dubious streak a mere two days too late for us to update his stats.

Overall, this isn’t cataclysmic. Woods really had won 14 when the article about Belmonte was written and when it was being printed. Plus, the exact number didn’t matter in the context of the Belmonte story as much as the all-time greatness did. However, the timing of the whole incident was just inconvenient enough to be frustrating.

Doesn’t that tend to be the case in bowling?

In a sport that places such an immense value on timing to be successful, the irony of all surrounding timing being bad can at least be appreciated for its absurdity.

For instance, it’s impossible to write a story about Walter Ray Williams Jr. (there are three of them, maybe even four in this issue alone) with any confidence in his career stats being accurate at publication as he adds titles faster than a bowler can peel out of the parking lot after being eliminated from a regional.

On rare occasions, a lane breakdown will occur during practice, which seems like good timing because at least it wasn’t during competition. Nope—such a breakdown will always happen in the last minute of practice, thereby delaying the start of competition.

A string of lucky-break strikes builds a lead for a player who then leaves a pocket 7-10 on a shot for the win. A player making a run for the show hits a bad pair in the last game, costing him a chance at victory. A young fan eager to see his favorite player gets out of school just in time to find out his hero was on A squad. A bowler shows up to open bowling for practice just in time to see the last lane get filled. An effort to proactively move equipment from one city to the next ends in Albuquerque, which was neither one city nor the next.

Some of these examples are more catastrophic than others. Leaving a huge split on a potential winning shot is far more devastating than a typo that isn’t a typo. For the most part, these timing issues are funny enough to avoid being aggravating, even if they can be moderately annoying.

All that previous talk about whether Woods having 15 majors is moot, by the way. Shortly after this issue is sent to the printer, Woods will win the PGA Championship, thereby giving him 16 majors by the time this issue is stuffed into mailboxes.

Of course, planning for that to be the case also ensures it won’t be the case based on the same principles stated throughout. That’s the thing about bad bowling timing—as soon as you plan for it to be bad, it makes itself good.

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

Those of us entrenched in the bowling industry easily can get jaded to the many quirks of bowling, which is unfortunate. When we’re world-weary, we treat such quirks as normal and can’t properly appreciate the player eccentricities and absurd details of the game itself that confound new audiences and should captivate us as well. This month, we’ll discuss a few of the most mind-boggling peculiarities in the great game of bowling.

Yielding to Dead Pairs

All major professional tours use the one-pair courtesy rule. It’s not your turn until someone on the pair to your left and then someone on the pair to your right bowls. The best feature of the system is it unequivocally determines whose turn it is. You’re up or you’re not.

However, when cuts are made and fields get smaller, occasionally the tournament director will take every other pair out of play. That is, 3-4 will be vacant, 5-6 will have bowling, 7-8 will be vacant, 9-10 will have bowling, etc. The idea is to speed up the pace of the game as now there is no requirement to yield to anyone. One pair left of all bowlers is vacant, as is one pair right. On your pair, it is always your turn or your opponent’s turn, regardless of what else is happening in the building.

This isn’t the way it works in real life. Bowlers instinctively change the yielding rule from one-pair courtesy to next-pair-that-has-bowling-on-it-even-if-it’s-at-a-venue-down-the-street courtesy.

The only difference between having dead pairs in between active pairs is there’s less activity peripherally. When there are bowlers on the adjacent pair, they’re milling about awaiting their turns, but the closest bowling is always one pair away. With dead pairs, the bowling is just as far away but there is less potentially distracting activity in the immediate vicinity.

Paradoxically, the fewer distractions left and right actually lead to greater potential for distractions in the bowlers’ minds, causing them to yield past the pairs on which nothing is happening, all the way to the next pair where something might be happening.

Bowlers, when yielding to dead pairs, are yielding to nothing.

Wild Prognostication

It’s the third frame of the second game of the first round of what will eventually be 60 games of qualifying. Someone walks up to someone else and utters, “What’s the cut going to be?”

Wild prognostication is one of the most fun aspects of bowling in all cases. That’s why we project cuts with 58 games to play, discuss the Player of the Year race two weeks into a 12-month season and anoint The Next One based on a shaky cell-phone video of a three-year-old getting the ball all the way to the arrows before it drops into the gutter.

It doesn’t take a soothsayer to know this type of discussion will last as long as bowling does. It has to—what else are we going to talk about during game two of qualifying?

PA Announcers Talking to the Players

At the beginning of a day of bowling, the PA announcer—usually also the tournament director—gets on the mic and welcomes fans to the event. Then, he directly addresses the players.

“Bowlers, when your lanes come up, you’re ready to start your practice.”

This is completely normal in our sport. But imagine this scenario: at a baseball game, the PA announcer comes on and says, “Players, when the team at bat makes three outs, it’s time for that team to take the field while the team in the field returns to the dugout for their time at bat.”

Put that way, it sounds utterly ludicrous, and yet it’s as normal as can be on the lanes.

We shouldn’t get rid of any of these things (except yielding to nothing). We should, however, welcome absurdity for absurdity sake, revel in it and appreciate the fact our game is entirely unique from all others.