Getting Ready (Healthy) for the Majors

It really sucks to get sick right before a 4-week road trip.  I haven't been able to exercise and I really am glad I had my son Alex to help out with the drive from Denver to Flagstaff.  That being said, it's time to get ready to go down to Sun City, AZ for the first of two Senior Regionals that should make for a good tune up before the Senior US Open next week in Las Vegas.  I'm looking forward to a fun week with Alex and getting to see my sister Cathy and her husband Bob while down in Phoenix.  Oh, and a good finish to start the trip would also be nice!

PBA Senior Tour - Dayton

Dayton is always one of my favorite stops.  Mike Irwin, Shannon Pluhowsky and staff always do a great job, I love the center, and I always feel like I'm going to bowl well there.

The Carmen Salvino pattern tends to be high scoring, and I started this tournament off with a 300 game.  I continued to bowl well through the first block and ended up at +305 for the first 8 game block.  The second block was another story.  I didn't bowl that well the first two games on the high end of the center, then bowled ok on 1-2, then shot back-to-back 180 games on lanes 5-6 and 9-10.  I then had to recover to get back into the number for the finals, which I did in games 5-6-7, highlighted with a 290 in game 6 of the block.

The format for this tournament was a cut to the top 32, the 8 more games of match play with a 30-pin bonus for a win.  Of course my first match is against Walter Ray Williams, Jr.  I really created my own transition on the pair and only shot 227, while WRW pounded out a 279 game against me.  As it turns out, I went 5-3 on the morning and bowled well enough to move up from 17th to 14th, which meant I moved on to the afternoon match play block of the top 16.

At the start of this block, some of my physical game issues re-surfaced, and I didn't bowl well the first 3 games, while my opponents bowled 278-279-268!  So, after an 0-3 start to the block, I bowled much better the last 5 games, but I could not catch up and stayed in 14th.

This was a better week and will hopefully be a springboard into the majors in June.

PBA Sr Tour - Winter Garden

Ouch!  That kind of sums things up after missing cash by ONE pin and finals by 11.  This was a 3-squad tournament with no re-oiling in between.  On "C" squad I started on the "burn" and got off to a horrible start, shooting 169 on lanes 13-14.  Followed up by a 182, I was off to a -50 start, then shot 246 to get me going again, and I finished the block at +28.  The second block wasn't very good.  I had a lot of trouble with the ball hooking early and I missed some shots to the inside - just couldn't get anything going and dropped to -8.  The third squad was on the "fresh" and I set up my first pair beautifully, starting with the front 7 to shoot 259.  However, I struggled to get a clean reaction on my next 3 pairs, and I was at +15 with two games to go.  Making a "what the hell" move, I switched to a lightly polished medium pearl and shot 258.  I tried this same ball on the next pair and it was way too much length for the pair.  I switched back to the stronger solid ball, got a 3-bagger, but then the next two shots went flat-7, flat-7.  I struck in the 10th but left a 6-8 in the 11th.  I prettty much knew the two flat 7s and the non strike in the 11th were going to be my undoing.  Like any tournament, I missed a couple of spares and gave a couple pins in count away on a couple of splits.  Lesson learned again - don't give any count away if you can help, stay present on every shot and keep grinding!  I'm proud of myself that I kept grinding and almost got back to a check, but it's time to figure out what went wrong mechanically this week, so I'm off to Kegel to get a quick lesson with Del Warren.