The short version: I bowled really well and won today in Buddy Tierno’s Senior Tour. For those of you don’t get nauseous too easily and want all the gory details, read on.
As many of you know, I retired a little over a year ago and have been working as hard as I can to improve my bowling. I have been bowling 6 or more games essentially every day unless I am traveling or fishing. Even after a year of doing this, I still look forward to practicing every day. After the first 3 months, I had to face the fact that just learning to repeat mediocre shots better wasn’t going to get me too far. Inspired by a BTM article last Fall about finding and working with a coach, I tracked down Ken Yokobosky. Ken is a Gold level coach and one of the Team USA coaches…he is about 90 min from me and I’ve been working with him since January. We have made so many changes to my game, I have lost track of them all. The biggest things were changing from a four step approach to five, increasing my ball speed (+1.8 mph), changing my hand position, and keeping my right shoulder back more until the release point. It has been really fun working with Ken and my game has improved enormously in practice. Alas, the improvement I have made hasn’t been very evident in SASBA yet, although I have had a number of good tournament showings up here the past few months.
In August, I was high qualifier in one of Buddy Tierno’s Sr Tour events. Buddy’s tournaments are one day affairs where you bowl 5 games of qualifying and then 1 out of 3 from three age groups (50-59, 60-66, and 67+) go on to match play finals. The finals consist of single game, single elimination match play and the high qualifier gets byes all the way into the semi-finals. Everyone else is seeded according their qualifying score, regardless of age. I was +251 (with a 300 game) in qualifying in August and then had to sit out 4 rounds while field was narrowed down to three and me. In the semi-finals, I went strike, 10 pin/spare, bucket/spare, sheet and lost 267-266…that was a little hard to swallow, but I got some revenge today! More on that below.
Last week in Kenner, I threw it just about as well as I can on Saturday. Sunday I was totally lost. That’s the way it has been for me in SASBA for months now...good on Sat or Sun, but never both…very frustrating. My timing wasn’t right this week in practice either on Mon, Tue, or Wed. Then on Thursday, everything came together again…my last four games were 268, 300, 269, 249…threw it well Friday too…and, again on Saturday (yesterday).
So, I was really looking forward to today’s tournament. I was striking at will in practice. Then, the lights came on and I started off strike, 10 pin/spare, strike, 4-6-7, 4-6-7. I had 75 after five frames, while almost everyone else had four baggers and five baggers…”great, just great”, I thought. But, I re-grouped and fired 7 strikes in a row for 225 and then tossed 249-251-237-236 to wind up 4th in qualifying.
I got one bye in the match play rounds and the first guy I bowled opened in the 2nd and 3rd frames taking some pressure off me…I waxed him 248-172. Next, I had to bowl the guy who beat me 267-266 back in August. This time, I was the one with 267 and he left a few flat 10s for 238…sweet!
The next game I had a double early, but then left 2 ringing 10s and a shaker 7 in the middle of the game. I got up in the 9th on a strike and down 16 sticks. I threw four shots as well as I am capable of and punched out for 227. My opponent needed two strikes in the 10th to beat me, but he left a 4-9 and I was in the finals. In the final match, I threw all 12 shots well, but had two taps early in the game…the guy I was bowling was striking too, but I finished with the last six to win with a 259.
So, all the hard work and coaching is finally starting to pay off. I know I still have a long way to go, but I’ll keep practicing every day until I get to the point where I can consistently bowl as well in tournaments as I’ve been doing in practice.
ps Pete Seibel: I bowled Tom Smith in the title match
pps Stan: Buddy says "Hi" and hopes to see you in Vegas at the High Roller in a few weeks
