PDA

View Full Version : Jason's tv recap



onefrombills
11-10-2008, 02:28 PM
Well bowling fans, Senior bowling on TV is back! No, I’m not talking about Walter Ray Williams Jr. making back-to-back shows for the bazillionth time (although my newbie bowling fan wife did say, “he made it again?” Uh, yeah. Get used to it dear.) But real, old-fashioned PBA Senior Tour action on real, old-fashioned cable TV for the first time since 2001! Of course, the Senior high jinks was saved for last and there was first the matter of crowning the champ in the Junior division among four worthy and unusually diverse contenders, including the living legend (the aforementioned WRW), the wily veteran (Mike Scroggins), the young lion (Bill O’Neill) and his best man (Anthony Lacaze)…heeeere on Gilligan’s Is-land.

In Match 1, Walter Ray took on Mike Scroggins, who looked about as comfortable during the first two frames as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. After mopping up the Ted Striker-esque sweat pouring from his brow after his shaky spare, open frame start he settled in and began to give an apparently razor-sharp, gutter-playing Deadeye a run for his money. After cutting the lead to 13 pins heading into the ninth frame, Williams turned on the afterburners and closed with a five-bagger to advance to the title match with a 258-222 victory.

Match 2 had to have one of the most interesting back stories in recent memory, as former college teammates and fraternity brothers Bill O’Neill and Anthony Lacaze (O’Neill was also the best man in Lacaze’s wedding…as if the rest wasn’t awkward enough) were set to do battle. Making it even more interesting was the fact that Lacaze is an amateur (which in bowling means…well, almost nothing) who didn’t even own a shirt with his name on the back and had to have one made after bowling the opening round of the tournament nameless and incurring a $100 fine.

Despite all of the backstory fireworks, the nuts and bolts of the match were pretty straightforward, with Lacaze playing around third arrow and O’Neill playing out between first and second arrow. It was pretty obvious that O’Neill had the better reaction of the two, as Lacaze appeared to have very little hold (a 4 pin and a 4-9 on barely-inside-of-target shots in frames 3 and 5) and absolutely no swing (a tripped two pin on a slightly wide-of-target shot in the 3rd and a washout in the 6th). O’Neill, on the other hand, not only seemed to have room to miss a little right and a little left but he looked like he was throwing it about as good as Mariano Rivera in a World Series game. Yet despite that, a couple of good breaks for Lacaze paired up with a couple of bad ones for O’Neill gave Lacaze a pop at tying the match and sending it into sudden death with a turkey in the tenth frame. Lacaze trusted his first one a little too much to the right and it never made it back to the pocket, breaking down the 2-10 split, but leaving him with nine and not quite enough pins to catch his best man. But hey, at least he has $6,000 and a nice new peach name shirt to hang in the closet next to that powder blue wedding tuxedo, eh? (Did you all catch the photo? It’s a good thing Mr. Blackwell just kicked the bucket.)

I was a little surprised to see the title match of the Junior event take place immediately after Match 2, given the format of the past Women’s Series events (with their title match usually taking place between Match 2 and Match 3 so the show ends with the main event’s title match), but my guess is that they did this because they wanted to be able to have the winner of the tournament in the booth for a whole 15 minutes…which I also happen to think is very smart. (Don’t you like to hear what the winner has to say after the bowling’s over? I always do.) I thought this would be a very good, competitive, match and I really didn’t have a clear favorite in mind (which says a lot about my feelings for Mr. O’Neill’s bright future).

Walter Ray started the match with a flush strike and O’Neill got up and slammed a 10 pin, followed by a pure strike. Williams then was surprised by his ball’s early hook in the 2nd, resulting in a high split and an open frame to put him behind in the match. After Williams struck in the 3rd, O’Neill packed another one in his 3rd and followed that with a wicked half-pocket ringing 10 in the 4th. I actually made a note of something at this point in the match, which was that it seemed whenever O’Neill zipped through the ball a little too aggressively it went an extra foot or so down the lane and came in behind the headpin for a 10 pin. Whenever he “waited for it” a split-second longer the ball would roll up and either hit flush or bump the 10 out. I gave myself a pat on the back when Randy also noticed it (for which he also deserves a pat, or a fist-bump or whatever those crazy kids in the booth are doing nowadays) a little later in the match as well. I only mention this not to make myself look good (which is a near impossible feat even under perfect circumstances anyways) but because it would come up again later at the most critical point in the match.

Of course as he always seems to do, Walter Ray figured out his tough lane by the 6th frame and began to toss a series of Gwen Stefanis (see last week’s blog for reference if you’re not sure what a Gwen Stefani is…or better yet, see if you can guess before looking it up) to control his own destiny through nine frames. O’Neill bowled a solid game up until the 10th and needed a double and good count to force Walter Ray to double in his 10th to earn his 45th (!) career win. O’Neill threw what appeared to be a decent shot on his first one, but the ball hooked way late and left him with the messy 2-4-8-10 split. After missing the conversion Williams just needed count to win and O’Neill sat on the bench in disbelief (yet still had the composure to apply Chapstick to his lips as soon as he sat down, which I found a little odd) and probably realized a very good chance to win his first career title had just slipped down the drain. I foresee that his wait for that first title will not be much longer though.

As for Walter Ray, what more can you say? The guy just keeps performing at the top of not only his game but the top of the game period, even after two and a half decades of Tour bowling. And he’s even looking forward to next year when he turns 50 and becomes eligible for the PBA Senior Tour, which conveniently enough for him (but incredibly inconveniently for the rest of the guys on the Senior Tour) takes place while the young-guy Tour (which he still plans to bowl, of course) is on hiatus. The guy is just a bowling machine and he loves to compete. I even commented to my wife during the show that he seems to have bowling down to a science almost as simple as playing a video game. Throw the ball. Watch what it does. Make adjustment. Throw lots of strikes. Move when something changes. Throw lots of strikes. Get tapped. Make spare. Throw more strikes. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Lift trophy. Cash oversized check. Go on to the next stop.

Now, as I said at the top of the blog, this telecast also marked the return of official PBA Senior Tour bowling to TV! The familiar Hugh Miller and TV newcomer Tim Kauble (who looks like he could be a long-lost member of the Tuetel family from Orange County Choppers) squared off for the title and trophy as Walter Ray joined Randy and Rob in the booth.

Kauble started the match off with a perfect strike and preceded to introduce the world to the “Kauble Cabbage Patch” which is surpassed in homeliness only by the 1980’s Xavier Roberts dolls of the same name. Miller matched Kauble’s strike in frame one, then threw what looked like a bad shot on the left lane in frame two, leaving a 3 pin, which he converted. Kauble then threw two more for a turkey in frames two and three and Miller struck and then went slightly high for a 6-10 in the fourth, which he also converted. After Kauble opened the door a bit in the fourth by flagging a 10 pin (I’m sure WRW’s eye started twitching uncontrollably after watching that since he probably hasn’t missed one himself since about 1983) and followed it with another strike, Miller got up and struck again on the right lane in the 5th and had a chance to take the lead for the first time in the match with a double on the left lane.

What happened next was very interesting. Hugh threw what he appeared to think was an excellent shot and the ball carved right through the nose for a wide-open 4-6-7-10 split. With Kauble starting to pull away, Miller had one last chance to stay in the match by doubling up in the 8th frame on the same lane, but left a 6-pin on another shot that he seemed to think was pretty good. The lesson? (By the way, Walter Ray picked up on it and made a comment late in the match…which is why he’s bowling’s version of God). Hugh, who happens to be an awesome player with 25 shows and seven Tour titles under his belt (which just goes to show that this can happen to anybody), was fooled by the reaction of his ball on his first shot on the left lane and never was able to recalibrate his line the entire match. His progression from light to slightly high to very high to high pocket to half pocket illustrates to me that he was making moves on every shot and, more than likely, he simply made the mistake of either adjusting off of a bad shot (that he may not have recognized was bad) or missing the opportunity to see that the lanes had changed (started hooking more, that is) between his last shot of practice and his first good shot (the one in the 4th) on the left lane.

But Hugh’s loss was Kauble’s gain and we must congratulate Tim on his first Senior Tour victory. He’s clearly a fun-loving guy and represents the spirit of camaraderie that the Senior Tour is all about. Plus it’s a good thing he won now because come next year when WRW is out there, there may not be a lot more opportunities for the rest of the guys except when he’s off pitching horseshoes.