Stop – Don't Turn the Page!
If you get all your news from TV, you might want to print out and save this story to read after Christmas.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a noise?
We keep hearing how "successful" the Professional Bowlers Association World Series of Bowling was . . . but unless a large audience watches the taped television shows, which air from October 25 – December 13, can it really be labeled successful?
The concept was certainly groundbreaking, but outside of the Detroit market, how much attention did it garner among grassroots bowlers? Did the fans really understand the WSOB and try to follow it as it developed?
No matter who won Sunday's title match in the 69th U.S. Open, history was going to be made. Fortunately for Pete Weber, it was him. Weber's strike on the day's final shot at Brunswick Zone-Carolier in North Brunswick, N.J., gave him a 215-214 victory over Mike Fagan of Grapevine, Texas. It marked the PBA and USBC Hall of Famer's fifth U.S. Open title surpassing his legendary father Dick and the recently-deceased Don Carter for the most in the history of the U.S.Open and its predecessor, the All-Star.
Jason Belmonte, the two-handed international star from down-under, a one-time PBA champion, 2008-09 PBA Rookie of the Year and the No. 4 in the current PBA Point ranking, has informed us that recently on the PBA tour certain players have caused doubt about who he is as a person and as a bowler. Belmo has written his thoughts on this matter for publication on Bowlingdigital.com for all of you around the world to read.
The fast-approaching 2010-2011 PBA Tour season, which kicks off Oct. 24 with the World Series of Bowling, is almost here and with it come a number of exciting changes for fans to look out for. With a full-field WSOB in its second go-around, a true MEGA-EVENT in the $1 million Tournament of Champions, a return of the U.S. Open to New Jersey to highlight the 2011 Winter Swing and an all-new PBA Playoffs competition to close out the season, this year's Tour schedule is built solidly around these four marquee pieces. 
He inspires critics to yearn for days when bowlers kept score by abacus, the lanes were lit by gas lamp, and any display of passion more boisterous than a golf clap warranted permanent expulsion from the bowling center. He has turned a ham hock into the most bitterly polarizing symbol the sport has ever known. He is Rob Stone (r.), Lord of the Hambone, jester in the royal court of future hall of famer Randy Pedersen (l.), and the face glued to dart boards in the homes of bowling purists from coast to coast.
In a span of less than nine months, capped by her victory in the USBC U.S. Women's Open Wednesday night, Kelly Kulick of Union, N.J., has put together the most amazing string of titles in women's professional bowling history. By defeating top qualifier Liz Johnson, 233-203, Kulick became the first woman to win two of the sport's most prestigious titles in the same year – and the only player in professional bowling history to win four consecutive major championships.
Each professional sport has a signature event that loyal fans as well as casual and some non-fans put on a "don't miss" schedule once a year. What is professional bowling's signature event? Pictured: Mike Jakubowski a.k.a. Mike J. Laneside What is professional bowling's signature event? The new PBA Tournament of Champions featuring a million-dollar prize fund and a $250,000 first prize check will be. The 2010-11 Lumber Liquidators PBA Tour season is in the process of being
finalized for next season's event and ESPN TV schedule.
Bowling has not escaped the nation's economic slowdown on many fronts and many have been predicting doom and gloom for bowling tournaments. The PBA ran into a lost sponsor and a lost tournament site during the current 2009-10 tour season. So rumor was rampant that the three former Microsoft executives who have lost an estimated $20 million since they purchased the PBA in 2000 might be pulling the plug on the 2010-11 season.
On a Sunday afternoon last month one person achieved so many things in two televised games at the PBA Tournament of Champions. She put New Jersey on the map, advanced women's bowling to the level that a woman could beat a man without a huge power game, and she could easily have had her own "Survivor" show, or maybe she did that day. This was Kelly Kulick, Union, NJ. (r.) I caught up with her at Hanover Lanes in her Tenpinners League.
Kelly Kulick has had a feel for bowling history all her career and now she knows how it feels to become a big part of that history. The 32 year-old from Union accomplished one of the most amazing feats in sports eight days ago by becoming the first woman to win a Professional Bowlers Association national tour stop in the 51 years of the organization. And it came in one of bowling's most prestigious events, the 45th running of the Tournament of Champions.
It is anyone's guess what exactly went through Kelly Kulick's mind the moment she stood on the approach at Red Rock Lanes in Vegas last Sunday with one strike standing between herself and history. Maybe she heard those tearful phone calls with her mother a few years ago during a difficult season as the first woman ever to obtain an exemption on the men's PBA Tour. Maybe she grinned somewhere inside herself at the thought she had last week of leaving bowling behind for culinary school.
As Kelly Kulick was making history Sunday afternoon by winning the PBA Tournament of Champions, bowlers across the country sat on the edge of their seat as they watched it unfold. The more strikes Kulick threw in her 265-195 victory over Chris Barnes, the more social networking sites like Facebook lit up with comments about what was happening. Once Kulick had locked up her place in sports history, even more bowling fans headed online to talk about and dissect what had just transpired.
If you're thinking about giving up on your dreams, try walking a day in Wayne Garber's shoes. Try sitting where he sat as a doctor told him that his lifelong dream of making a Professional Bowlers Association telecast dissolved the moment he fell down a flight of stairs after a 2007 tournament in Reno, snapping both patellar tendons in his knees. Try spending the next four months on your back as your mind mulls the doctor's admission that never before had he seen an athlete recover from such an injury.
I am a die-hard PBA supporter. I sincerely believe the PBA is the most important promotional vehicle in the game. Yet, I have been rather disappointed in the first half of the 2009-10 season TV programs "The World Series of Bowling" that were taped in Detroit. I am fully aware of the financial advantages gained by the PBA office, as well as the PBA players via this method of operation. However, I must confess, the first half of the past season was anything but exciting.
"Bowling goes globe-trotting in 2009" was the headline of an article on BOWL.com as of Oct. 6, 2009. Author Gianmarc Manzione told readers that the sport of bowling took on more of an international face than ever before as three PBA players have won titles in Asia in the past weeks. Manzione seems to be glad for the PBA bowlers that the days are gone when the Japan Cup offered Asia its only real opportunity to glimpse PBA talent. Well, there were opportunities enough since the European Bowling Tour was founded nine years ago and many of the Open tournaments in Asia are running since more than 30 or even 40 years.
There is no question that Wendy Macpherson is one of the greatest women bowlers of all time, winning the distinction of being named Bowler of the Decade of the 1990's. Her career began with a stunning victory as an 18-year-old winning the U S Open in 1986, and by the time the PWBA Tour ceased operation in 2003, Macpherson had accumulated 20 pro titles. It was in Reno, Nevada just before the USBC Hall of Fame induction ceremony that Jim Goodwin took the opportunity to 'catch up' with what has been happening in Wendy's life "post PWBA."
The PBA's decision to truncate the fall
tour of the 2009-10 season by staging seven events in the Detroit area
from Aug. 1 to Sept. 7 - and calling it the World Series of Bowling -
is the boldest move I've seen the organization make in the 40 years
I've been covering it. Obviously, it's great for the Detroit area and its bowling fans, but is
it good for the PBA? Overall, the hometown equation notwithstanding,
I'd have to give it a definite maybe. The move has some risks, especially the fact that six of the seven finals will be taped for an ESPN television series that will be shown from mid-October to early December.