Over memorial day weekend, I was bowling in a tournament. One of the 6-8 tournaments this organization holds throughout the year. I have cashed a few times in these before, but never did well enough to make the big money at any of them. This time however, after qualifing for the semi-finals, and then doing well in the semi-finals, I stood in 2nd place. The 20 of usd that were left would bowl one more game to determine the top 5 that would bowl a stepladder tv style to determine the winner. That is when it started.
The guy that was sitting in the first position at that point was asking me about a split if we both ended up after our 1 game still in 1st & 2nd place--at first I didn''t know what he was talking about, since i have never been in that high of a position--so he explained it and asked if I wanted to "split" the the 1st & 2nd place money if we both make it to that final match. Something about that didn''t sit quite right with me(for myself, I mean), and I turned it down, and I kinda explained nicely to the guy that if I bowl really bad in the final game, that I don''t deserve that kinda money anyway. It ended up not being relevent for him because he bowled bad the 1 game and dropped out of the top 5. I however, managed to squeak in to the 5th spot, and ended up climbing up the ladder to the final game. Then the guy sitting in the first position asked me the same thing--I still didn''t get what he was talking about, might have been the way he said it, and when he explained it, I could only tell him the same thing I said to the other guy that asked me. I said if I bowl really bad, I don''t deserve the the big money anyways. He said the reason they do it is because of the differnce between the 1st & 2nd place money---1st was 10,000 and 2nd only 2,500. I understood why some people would do that in light of what he told me, but something within me just didn''t feel right about it. He got kinda happy I think when I said that I couldn''t do the split--based on how I was bowling that day(not great, but good enough to get there), I don''t blame him--he turned to his wife i guess it was a said "he doesn''t want to split", --but when I started out the final match on fire and he didn''t , he was really gettingb upset, really upset--I ended up winning the natch and the 10,000 dollars--but what I was most pleased with is thast even though I was in the handicap deivision, I bowled a 202 scratch in the final match on a tough oil pattern to win.
To me, that would kinda cheapen the final match, which quite a few of the bowlers & other people hung around to see what would happen--I mean if 2 people already agrede to split the money--how can the final match even end up being legitimate? where is the pressure? if you don''t bowl well who cares right? you still come away with decent money...I just couldn''t do that myself.
Besides, this was the farthest I had ever gone in one of their tournaments. Now that I finally got there, if I was going to go all the way, I wanted to win everything I could if I did.
What I really wanted to ask is, is this a common practice when getting that far in big money tournaments? Is there some unwritten rule in bowling that says that someone in my position should have "split" the money? If anyone else has ever been in that situation what did you do?
Brad
Edited on 6/15/2010 11:18 AM
