Mounts Bowling

The weekend of May 15-17, 2009 the PBA Western Region came to Visalia, CA and I decided to shoe up for the first time since the Visalia Open 2008. Let me first say that I've been sad to say that I have only bowled in one tournament over the past year but hey; I've been busy with life.

The tournament was nice though it was sparsely attended. Honestly I think the economy has quite a bit to do with that. The PBA raised entrance fees for their tournaments this month and of course people are not making and spending money like they used to so there was only 76 bowlers in this tournament. Last year the event drew 113 bowlers and the 2007 Visalia tournament hosted a field of 134; that's quite a declining trend.

Despite the low turnout it was still nice to attend. As always I attend this event because it is 45 minutes from my mom. The tournament usually falls on Mother's Day weekend so it is a natural fit into my schedule. This year was different however as Mother's Day was the Sunday prior, but hey, why alter an annual event.

Regarding the tournament conditions I will say that the event was a bit out of the ordinary. The last couple years this tournament has been bowled on the Cheetah Pattern and has been very high scoring but this year the cut was a very low +12 with more than half of the field scoring negative numbers. I was one of those that struggled but I am pleased to say that I never felt out of it. I fought the lanes and stayed away from enough splits and opens to make it interesting but I was not able to really string very many strikes together. My carry was not that great and I wasn't able to find consistent pin fall.

I guess you could say after the first few games trying to go straighter up the center of the lane I was finally able to move left and open the lanes up a teeny bit. This did help my scores but it merely allowed me to slow my decent into negative territory. I was -76 through three and the last five I was only -31. -Shrug-

I did have the pleasure of bowling with some fun guys. I bowled with Gary Duran and Joseph Jimenez who I've known for a while. I also met and bowled with for the first time Cameron Clemens who seemed like a good guy; I ddin't get to speak with him off the lanes though so I'll look forward to meeting him again some other time. To our left in the qualifying round was Joe Goldstein. He pretty much put on a clinic for those that watched him bowl. I heard his low game was a 211 or something like that. Anyway, whatever it was he was impressive as he led qualifying and eventually won the tournament on Sunday.

Thinking back on my performance I always wonder, "what if I could do it again?" I feel like I made some good moves as the games went by but maybe I could have refined them a bit more, after all when +12 makes the cut all you have to do is focus on staying clean and picking up the occasional double here and there.

Instead of having this mentality I started the event thinking I had to go +200 and when my first shots were a little shaky in finding the pocket I made some initial bad moves trying to find the pocket. If I could do it all over again I would have settled for strings of spares as I waited for the lanes to open up. I switched back and forth between my Fury Pearl and Twisted Fury as the day wore on but if I could do it again I might have switched to my Original Fury for some mid-lane roll and less dramatic late flip. In fact I made this change in my league last night actually and it worked well as the Shark pattern was breaking down. Anyway, I logged my scores, as always and you can see them below. Also, my sister and dad captured a bit of video from the day I'll see about editing it down a pinch and maybe I'll post that in the near future.

Thanks to Gary and Toni Mage for running the event and to Andy Galligas, Brian Cooper, and Ron Sandusky for hosting the tournament!


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