National Champs in Doubles

[Hampe]

This weekend was the national doubles finals that I mentioned in my other "national finals" thread, and as you can guess by the title of the thread, things went pretty good . We ended up taking first place in category "C" (<178 avg.)

There was a tournament the week before at the same center with a nearly identical oil pattern that I played in with my buddy, which ended up being a really good idea since last week I played the wrong balls at the wrong time and only averaged 186 (on pretty easy lanes). This week I had a good idea what to expect and knew exactly which balls to use and when to use them.

Saturday was the 1st round (should have been 18 teams, but only 16 showed up), and I got off to a really good start with an 8-bagger and kind of kept it rolling from there. I ended up with 220 avg. over 8 games, and we finished the 1st round in 1st despite my buddy having a bad day (only 173 avg. after he rolled 196 the week before). The top 8 teams from Saturday played a Petersen final on Sunday, and during the warmups my buddy figured out what he had been doing wrong on Saturday. We had about a 170 pin lead after the first round, but then we noticed there was no indication anywhere that the pins carried over from the first round. We both decided it didn't matter and we would just play as if they didn't carry over.

Well, my buddy really did figure out what he was doing wrong....he rolled a 210 avg over the 7 final games. I rolled a 212 and we totally crushed the competition. We won all 7 games comfortably and had the lead from game 1 on. It turned out that the pins from saturday also carried over, so we ended up with a pretty dominant lead.

To give you an idea of how far ahead we were at the end; the difference between first and second place in category "A" was 58 points, in category "B" it was 29 points, and in category "C" it was 672 points .

Link to the results:
http://bowling.lexerbowling.com/bowl...oublettehomme/

[vdubtx]

That is great! CONGRATULATIONS!!

Awesome performance between you and your partner.

If you bowled like that is a tournament here, people would be screaming Sandbagger to you!!

[J-Dilly]

That's a sweet run! Congrats! Dub is right, you would have that sandbagger label for sure

[Bunny]

Nice Bowling!

[Aslan]

Good job. I'll credit my advice and wisdom as what really put you over the top.

[vdubtx]

Good job. I'll credit my advice and wisdom as what really put you over the top.

[Aslan]

[Hampe]

Haha....Vdub, Aslan is right that his wisdom and advice helped me, although maybe not quite like he imagines. Before each shot I just thought to myself "What would Aslan do?", and then I did the exact opposite .

[Hampe]

That is great! CONGRATULATIONS!!
Awesome performance between you and your partner.
If you bowled like that is a tournament here, people would be screaming Sandbagger to you!!

That's a sweet run! Congrats! Dub is right, you would have that sandbagger label for sure

Thanks guys. Yea, I'm sure the other guys were thinking "what the hell are these guys doing in the C category?!". But aside from the fact that I probably bowled the best 15 game stretch I've ever bowled before (and not just scores, I mean focus and execution), there's a few factors as to why we were in the C category.

It mostly has to do with the fact that we play on tougher lanes than most other cities/regions. And it's not even necessarily a tougher oil pattern, but sometimes the backends are not very clean which really makes it hard to score well. This last friday I bowled a 163 average over 4 games (I don't think anybody even sniffed 800 that night), afterwards we walked down the side of the first lane to have a look; the oil was just a huge block 40 something feet down the lane, and the backends were covered with carrydown (no way it was only from league that night). The lanes were pretty much unplayable, and it's not the first time it's been like that either.

My partner (he was in category B last year) also is doing a sport pattern challenge league at that center which for some reason counts towards official average, which brought his average down quite a bit. He also went to a Slowinski camp last year and has been making some big changes to his game, which always makes your average go down before it goes back up (he's starting to finally get back to where he was before).

Add to that the fact that the 2 guys we expected to be our biggest competition didn't even make the final, and the other double that could have challenged us played like crap in the final....I guess the stars just aligned or whatever this weekend.

We'll be both be in category B next year I think, so I'm just glad we can leave category C on top .

[circlecity]

Good shooting!! that is what it takes to win tournaments. You can't win shooting your average. Nice going...