Don't have time to debate all this - my thoughts will as always be available on my blog.

But here are some facts from last year 2 weeks into the tournament:

3/2/12 -- The 11th Frame: How tough is the Open Championships condition?
http://www.11thframe.com/page/blog_id_4885_grp_-1

Another team on the Thursday 2:30 p.m. squad, Legend of Dung Ho of Cerritos, Calif., did take the team lead with 3,088. Michael Tucker, the 1992 all-events champion, led the team with a 648, according to the release.

Then on Friday they grabbed the team all-events lead with 9,666, while Ryan Whitney of Richardson,Texas, took the lead in doubles, singles and all-events, USBC reported.

Here is the news release on Whitney, a no-thumber who fired sets of 631 in team, 766 in doubles and 773 in singles to total 2,170 all-events. Partner Chris Hans added 654 as they totaled 1,420 in doubles.

I bowled March 9-10. I also watched the Fusion team that shot 3009 bowl since I know a couple guys on that team. Another guy on our team watched the current team leaders and the guys leading doubles bowled a couple pairs away from us. Based on what I saw and experienced my thought is the cash line will be somewhere between what it took in 2012 and 2011 - http://www.bowl.com/Open_Championships/Other_Information/Low_To_Cash/. I'd be surprised if the cash line scores were higher than 2011. But again it's too early to really say for sure.

I will say what the USBC video said is fairly accurate about both shots. I thought team played very similar to 2011 but I'm not convinced scores will be as high overall. I could see an elite team shooting just as high or higher than 2011 just because ICE does not break down as fast and I was able to make smaller moves. IMO ICE is very nice but it can bite you in the @#$@ too - more on that later. The Fusion team was playing around 8-9 to start. They also gave away about 100 pins in single pin spares so they could've had a really decent set. As with any year, ball choice depended on ball speed/rev rate matchup for your game. I didn't see any "one" ball, a fairly large variety, anything medium to heavy oil.

Doubles and singles to me played similar to Baton Rouge but was a little smoother reaction, remember it's fresh so think team from BR to start. With the lower volume it did break down but still at a slower rate than BR. I had to move left further than I did in team event but not as far in as I did in S/D in BR(9:00am squad in BR).

I'm assuming ICE is what made the shots hold up much better than what I'd typically expect at Nationals. Because of that I think it's even more important to play as a team in both events - longer to break in the shot but once you do it could be really good. The flip side is if you get on a pair in minors with someone not from your group. In minors we had 2 classified bowlers on our pair. We went in with a game plan to break it down around 6 and it worked great for the first two games. My doubles partner and I were on pace for 1250+(+35-40 after 2) but the third game the classified guys who were playing inside of us pushed the oil to our breakpoint and we got no reaction - I don't think it was carry down from what we were doing because I didn't see the same thing happen in team or at the Bowlers Journal, both on fresh oil. We ended up shooting 1172 which was kind of disappointing. Once that happened there was no getting that shot back and we were forced to play inside of the two classified guys and start over with breaking down a new line.

I don't blame the classified guys, it was just the luck of the draw. I think the lesson it shows is teamwork is key. Even if you have a couple guys not on the same page it probably will have a larger negative effect this year. Knowing what I do now I would've tried to play left of the classified guys from the start and fed it into the part of the lane they were playing.