i bowled the pba midwest/southwest regional in belton, missouri, this weekend and have several comments to make.

first, thanks go out to the staff at aaron's family fun center----they treated all the players like family. second, congrats to david beres on winning the title on a very demanding pattern( to see how low the scores were go to www.pba.com ). i would like to say it was a pleasure to meet ballreviews own mike austin who made it to the round of 16. great job mike----my hat's off to you !

this tournament was contested on the viper pattern on fairly new brunswick proanvilane synthetic lanes. i had practiced for several weeks on accuracy to prepare for this tournament as there was suppossed to a down and in shot between the 1st and 2nd arrows. the lanes were very slick and if you missed right early it wouldn't come back. if you pulled the ball there was no help in the center of the lane. i saw players playing all over the lane trying anything to see if it would work. my dull mammoth wasn't enough ball for a line outside the 1st arrow. and it wouldn't really hold going down 7-8. my smooth sanded awesome hook worked pretty good at this angle of attack----for a while. eventually, it was too much ball for this area and i found my best method of attack was with my polished rampage and playing a very slight swing shot. standing at appx. 25, hitting 16 at the arrows and the ball going out to 10. this was with medium speed and appx. 30 degrees of axis rotation. i had been left of this but there was some carrydown that came into play so i squared up a little more.

i was pretty happy with my spare shooting until the 8th game----i started with back-to-back open frames by missing the 7 pin and then the 10 pin. tacky synthetic approaches caused me to really stick for the first and second time all day----great timing !! i didn't think i bowled all that well until i looked at the scores. there were many players who struggled----including pba exempt players.

while we're on the subject of pba exempt players there was one to my left all day who really showed a lack of class. i won't mention his name but he threw a temper tantrum at a player on my pair and then one at me later. there was a player on my pair who was very deliberate in his set-up and approach( very time consuming ). everyone else in the area tolerated him and went on with their business. the exempt player at one point put his ball down hard on the ball return and shouted, " je*** ch****, will you go ahead and throw the ball already !! ". later he "tried to speed me up" as well, but i wasn't going for that. i kindly reminded him that i was guilty of "double jumping" at my first pba regional and i was merely making sure i was bowling in order. to this pba exempt player: i probably won't be as good a bowler as you are but i'm sure i'm a better human being.

all in all it was a good outing. i will try to absorb what i learned about this pattern and work harder to correct both the mental and physical mistakes i made.