I am a sports addict. I follow baseball, football, basketball, and golf with reasonable interest, but bowling takes precedence over all sports. Bowling is my life. It is my passion.
In most sports, I may agonize temporarily when my favorite team or athlete fails, but nothing depresses me more than negative reports in the bowling world.
For more than 20 years, I have written dissenting and pessimistic articles expressing the deterioration of the bowling game. Many of my stories have castigated proprietors for blocking lanes and allowing our sport to become a travesty.
On occasion, I have been critical of the ABC for its laxity and permissiveness in sanctioned lane dressing procedures—policies that have permitted bowling centers to parade bowlers who average from 200 to 250 over a 30-week schedule.
Nevertheless, I sympathize with proprietors who have become enamored with recreational bowling to generate income. I envision myself in their position and ask what I would do to create additional income. In doing so, I have bastardized my true convictions and concern for the integrity of the game.
Yet, my resolution to be less critical and more positive concerning the direction the game is going has done little or nothing to inspire my faith for the future of bowling. As a matter of fact, several events of the past few months have further dampened my hopes for any cheerful expectations.
To begin with, we received news from Canada that Mendes, the giant bowling manufacturer, went bankrupt. At the same time, the Brunswick Corporation, beset by financial problems, discharged numerous executives and officers, mostly those closely associated with the bowling division of the corporation. In addition to this, they decided not to renew the contracts of staff members Walter Ray Williams Jr., Mike Aulby, Dave Davis, Randy Pedersen, Steve Jaros, and possibly others.
This news, coupled with the dire financial state of AMF, is anything but encouraging. These are the giants of the industry, the lane and equipment manufacturers that are vital for the growth and resurrection of the game.
There are other disheartening disclosures. For example, the Professional Bowlers Association, the greatest promotion vehicle in the game, hit a stone wall in 1999 and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Fortunately, a group headed by a former Microsoft associate bailed the organization out of its financial mess. Whether they succeed in returning the PBA to its once lofty stature remains to be seen.
Another disheartening episode in bowling's downward slide occurred several weeks ago. I attended the Brunswick World Tournament of Champions in Lake Zurich, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. During the glorious days of the PBA, this event was considered the crown jewel and most prestigious tournament of the year. Unfortunately, it wasn't even a mere shadow of the original version of the PBA's most coveted prize. It was, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary PBA stop—one that paraded the oddest field to ever represent a Tournament of Champions (and one on which I will elaborate in a future column).
Following this distressful tournament, I flew to Las Vegas to attend the Sam's Town Invitational, PWBA's counterpart of the PBA Tournament of Champions. This was, believe it or not, an even greater fiasco than the one that took place in Lake Zurich. One might expect that this tournament, the most significant on the PWBA Tour, would furnish lane conditions that are fair and equitable to all bowlers. As it were, it was the most nonsensical and disgusting pattern of lane maintenance one could imagine. Eight, that's right, eight left-handers completely dominated the tournament, from the first round of qualification right through to the eight television finalists.
The closest right-handed pursuer to this portside miscarriage of justice was Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, one of the three most talented players on tour. And how far do you suppose this superstar finished behind the lowest southpaw on the show? Well, to put it in the proper perspective, Dorin-Ballard could have shot six consecutive 300s in the final six games, and she would have still failed to crack the top eight. This includes the 30 bonus pins awarded for victories or an additional 780 pins.
To further illustrate the absurdity of this tournament, such right-handed superstars as Wendy Macpherson, Carol Gianotti-Block, Michelle Feldman, Kim Adler, Anne Marie Duggan, Marianne DiRupo, Leanne Barrette, Kim Terrell, and Robin Mossontte could have bowled an additional eight games, and all would have still lacked the necessary total to make the show.
To conclude this week of ignominy, the new Sam's Town management group issued a press release announcing withdrawal of its support for the PWBA Tour, which leads me to question the old adage, "No news is good news." In this case, I would have preferred no news!
John Jowdy, a member of the ABC and PBA Halls of Fame, is a past president of the Bowling Writers Association of America.