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Watching the qualifying rounds of this tournament is a welcome change. We have been seeing the longer patterns the last month and I think it was time to give the players a pattern that provides obvious friction to throw at. Not to say the lanes will be the easiest we have seen them but bowlers will be forced right instead of allowing a certain group to simply move left and use the longer oil to push their ball down the lane.

This week provided a real time challenge and connection problems so I will jump forward to past tense. The following information is being written on Monday (the day after the show)

The biggest challenges of the week proved to be the lane to lane differences and the mysterious round of 16. There were lanes that were very sensitive with the angles being used on the gutter. It wasn't difficult to throw it in the gutter if your angles were too open. It wasn't a simple matter of changing the angles, when making lateral moves this week you better be prepared to use combination moves. If the lane wasn't giving you the amount of hook you wanted and you felt you needed to move right you had better be sure that your speed to rev ratio was right, your ball rotation was in the right direction, and your swing wasn't bumping out too early. The lane surface and topography are very important factors on the shorter patterns when the field is playing that close to the gutter. The obvious advantage was to the players who had rev rates that allowed them to use straighter angles and speed control to adapt to the transitions instead of making elementary lateral moves.

This was a week that the field is lucky that Liz Johnson and Carolyn Dorin Ballard weren't here, they would have been good bets to have an impact on the show.

Then there was the mysterious round of 16. Where for some unknown reason the lanes played a lot tighter than anyone anticipated. Some bowlers were the fortunate benefactors. One was the eventual tournament champion Brian Voss. His opponent in the Round of 16 was the tournaments qualifying leader, lefty Parker Bohn III. Parker was totally baffled at how to compete as he had no clue on how to attack the conditions. Brian swept Parker in 4 games with Parker having only one game over 200 and that was only 207 after averaging 249 for the 16 games of qualifying. Parkers low game in a 7 game match with Jason Couch the round before was 210. Brian Voss didn't have a single game matching Parkers qualifying average in his 6 game victory over Mike Scroggins. It wasn't as if Brian lit them up either. Brian did have a 256 in game two but his other games were not even close to the what we expected from a condition that had provided eight 300 games during qualifying.

This was only an example of what happened as 4 of the 8 matches were 4-0 sweeps. Many of the players were confused. What ever Parker was dealing with didn't seem to be a problem for another lefty in the field, Patrick Allen as he swept Patrick Healey Jr. with 3 games of 245 or better while the right handed Patrick only had one game over 200. You could tell the ones that had seen this before and were more prepared. Chris Barnes made Chris Loschetter look silly in their match. I will have to share more with you in the Round of 16 details later.

No excuses, No complaints, No blaming. That is professional bowling. You don't have to like it you have to win on it. Recognition and versatility are becoming very important tools at this level of bowling and in my mind it should be that way. No I am not saying they should be blatantly different each round. I am saying the bowlers that prevail under such circumstances deserve a lot of credit and those that want to prevail better understand that we are seeing more of this than at any time I can remember and it will have to become a part of the game plan.