Well Reno has come and gone again, another ABC where sleep was a foreign word. I'll try to summarize this weekends bowling for those of you interested.

Team: (Ebonite HQ) This year I was on a new team with all the ingredients to win it all if we were fireing on all cylinders. The team consisted of The president of Ebonite (consistent 1900 shooter year after year in the ABC), a 2 time PBA regional champion, a former member of team USA, one of todays top young ametuers, and a young talented bowler who was making his first ABC tournament appearance (Threw 760 as a sub in the sport league a couple weeks ago like it was THS). A very solid group to say the least.

We drew the high end for team, lanes 69-70. This was dissapointing because we all knew the situation with the high end. All I can say is the rumors are pretty much true. Lane 69 acted like a normal lane but on lane 70 every ball would fade right on the way down the lanes. It was amazing to watch your ball being pulled to the right even when you squared up. Regardless we all did our best to make the adjustment from one side to the other.

Our first team game was pathetic. Our 5 man team shot 780 the first game, an all time low for any team I've ever bowled on. I shot 150 and left quite a few designer spares. As the track started to open a bit, (open could be a misleading word as you still couldn't miss target) the right lane the ball would actually now make the turn but it played as if it was 5-8 boards tighter. We ended up shooting 2845 for team and were high on the squad and 85th overall. Not bad after the aweful start.

Doubles: We had the famous All-Nighter squad that starts at 11:30, that's 1:30 for my local time. My doubles partner and I were the "wild card" doubles team as he is a lefty and I'm a righty. Our other doubles teams were set up based on guys who threw the ball similarly to try to enhance chances with the theory being that if the lanes played well for one they would play well for both.

We started on lane 31, 2 lanes to the right of the walkway. The difference in how the lanes played from the high end was dramatic. Both lanes on the pair played close with only about a 2 board difference for me. I played them in standing 36 and hitting 24 with a Pearl Big Blue drilled to go Long, Flip and stop. Smashed the pocket on every shot of the set but 2, threw 29 clean***(fouled picking up a stone . I had a hard time carrying the twisters, left about 6 flush stone 9's this set, and 3 stone 8's with one of them being a devastateing stone 8 in the tenth on a 3 timer. My partner used a Dull ball on the left. His first game was a struggle for him as he had to be perfect to strike. The second game he moved from the gutter in to between 2nd and 3rd and crushed them. As a doubles team we bowled a respectable 1285, this could have been in the 1400's if we had carried half the solid nine counts.

The other doubles teams from our group were bowling well too with everyone shooting 600 or better.

Singles: Switching lanes brought us to a pair that had been played quite differently as the shot moved from 24-26 board back out to about 23. Anything that got outside of 10 was a death sentence and never made it back, this held true for the entire tournament. Used the same Big Blue Pearl this set and continued hammering away at the pocket with about a 50% carry rate. It was amazingly hard far me to get all ten despite throwing the ball the best I've ever thrown it at an ABC.
I decided that the steady 200's weren't getting me anywhere and moved in deeper to 6th arrow. By this time there was quite a bit of carrydown and I was able to play "fallback" for the last 2 games. No change in the pin carry however although it was amazing to be able to throw about 19 miles an hour from 6th arrow, play fallback, and still leave smash nines. I ended up at about 580 for singles, couldn't carry the back row, and it was rediculously late to the point where I had nothing left in the tank for the last 2 games.

I'm still trying to find out where we ended up for team all events. After our poor start we did really well for the remainder of the tournament.

Reno Observations:

A few things that I saw in Reno while I was there. Many members of the Midwest PBA Family happened to be bowling over the weekend with a team from Wisconsin taking over first in all events. Another member and good friend shot his first ABC 300 game in team after starting 150-150. Watched Chris Johnson shoot a ton to take over singles all events with an X-factor.

We stayed at The Sands which was an average hotel for the town, but the tables appeared to pay out better than the Legacy for our squad. Tony Romas was good for eating (located in the Sands), we also liked the Victorian Buffet at the Legacy very much.

All in all a very challenging pattern this year at the ABC, also very challenging to get the right type of hit on the pins to get them all down. (Twisters are very different from regular pins....you'll see). Next year I hope we can get a singles/doubles time other than 11:30 at night, it's been 2 years in a row for us at that time.

My question is, has anyone bowled well in Reno this year. I understand that there are some good scores that have been posted.  Was it luck?  It is the on going propensity of bowlers to complain and point fingers and blame everything else on their low scores except themselves.  How come the complaining bowlers know so much about everything so that they can make all these excuses for their low scores but yet they don't know enough to figure out how to bowl higher scores on these lanes and conditions that they have dissected to the n'th degree?  This is why 220 averages are so common these days, because the complainers are catered to by their home centers so that they have their "blind man can strike" shots to make them feel good so they won't go bowl somewhere else.  Like the commercial says, "Buckup soldiers".  Once you except the facts that you are not going to be so great on any condition, then you will be able to learn more than you ever imagined.