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Monday, December 4th
Sean and I woke up this morning with every intention of getting on the road early, but when I looked outside and saw a few inches of snow on the ground I said to hell with that and went back to bed for a few hours. We finally hit the road around 10:30 and drove out of the snow in about 5 minutes. Who knew ??? We made the boring, uneventful drive to Baltimore which took about 5 ½ hours or so. Due to scheduling conflicts, we’re staying at different hotels this week so I dropped Sean off and headed to my hotel. I unloaded my truck and started doing some work on the computer. Since I was sick last week I had a lot of e-mails to get caught up on. After a few hours of work, Schlem and I headed over to Hooters for dinner. We sat there for a few hours watching the Eagles-Panthers game, then I headed back to the room to catch the end of Monday Night Raw. I just broke out the final season of Alias, so I’m probably going to watch a few episodes of that and get some sleep. Travel day is always boring and very tiring. The week really starts tomorrow. |
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Tuesday, December 5th
This morning I really didn’t do much of anything. This was one of those rare, boring mornings with no real agenda. I watched some more Alias and then went to pick Sean up to go practice, I guess I’m the chauffer this week ! We had to stop by Best Buy because since its Tuesday and the new movies came out today, I had to shop. I picked up Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Miami Vice and season 5 of 24. After that we headed to Panera Bread for lunch. I’d never eaten at a Panera Bread and I figured I’d try it. Then it was off to the bowl. I unloaded my equipment and grabbed a couple of bags off of the player services truck. We’re bowling on the Cheetah pattern this week, and for those of you that are just tuning in I HATE THIS PATTERN. It’s not that I just don’t like it, I hate it. I’m not wild about scorefests in the first place, but this is a scorefest when I’m not going to be able to play my “A” game to boot. In 5 ½ years out here, I’ve never made match play on this pattern. This is also the only pattern that I’ve never won a regional on. To put it lightly, this pattern isn’t my favorite. The surface here is brand new AMF HPL9000s, just installed in August and it looks to be a very good installation. Scores should be very high. I practiced for a few hours and struck way too much for my taste. Usually if I strike a lot in practice, that means bad news for me. There was quite a bit of friction on the gutter, so I was able to hook it a little more than normal on this pattern. Maybe, just maybe……… I used a couple of Thunderstrucks and a T-Road most of the time and pretty much everything looked usuable. That always makes the decisions harder for me, when I have too many options. After practice I headed back to the hotel to change clothes and put the finishing touches on last week’s report. I sent
everything off to Dennis, then I headed out to meet Sean for dinner. We went to Red Lobster ( a new entry in the Restaurant lineup ! ) with Nathan Bohr and Rick Benoit, the Brunswick Tour Rep. Sean and Nathan are both with Brunswick and I have always enjoyed talking to Rick. He is very knowledgeable and has some different views on things. Me being the constant learner, I can never get enough of talking to the insightful people in our sport. After dinner Sean, Nathan and I headed over to the theatre to see Casino Royale. I’ve always been a big James Bond fan, since the early Sean Connery days and I’ve been wanting to see this movie since it came out. I wasn’t disappointed at all ! I though that Daniel Craig did a fantastic job and the special effects and action scenes were top notch. The only part that bothered me was the extensive casino scenes, but mainly because I had no clue what was going on with the poker game. I’m a total idiot when I comes to cards. All in all it was a great movie. I just got back to the hotel and its time for some more Alias. I need to hurry and get through this season of Alias so I can move on to 24 ( my favorite show by far ). |
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Wednesday, December 6th
I headed over to the bowl this morning to watch the TQR. The scores were pretty high, but not quite as high as I had expected. I watched some friends bowl the first 3-4 games then I headed out to the truck to drill a couple of balls. Since I don’t match up on this pattern very well, we decided to try a few new things. We drilled a Spitfire ( 4 ½ x 5 – no hole ) and a Fire Diablo ( 6 ½ x 5 – no hole ). After we got everything laid out and sheets filled out, Schlem, Sean and I headed to lunch. After lunch it was back to the bowl to watch the end of the TQR and to work out the new balls. We left the surface of the Spitfire alone, but took the Diablo up to 2000 abralon and threw some polish on it. Shortly after that it was time to practice. The lanes played a little tighter tonight than they did yesterday, but they were still somewhat similar. I had two good options to play out with and when Schlem came down to help he moved me in with a couple of other balls. Now I had two options out and two options in. You never know how they will play tomorrow, so it’s best to be prepared. I didn’t feel as comfortable tonight as I did yesterday, but then again its rare that I feel good about my physical game two days in a row. After practice I spent about 30-40 minutes picking Norm’s brain about some things. Norm and I have a very good relationship and he’s always made himself available to me when I’m looking for some advice. We had a good talk and I gained some great insight as to how he approaches certain things. After that I headed back to change clothes and then to eat. Schlem, CJ and I joined Doug Kent and PA at Hooters. We sat there for what seemed like forever and I won’t lie, some cocktails were consumed ( maybe a few too many ! ). Finally we got out of there and headed back to the hotel. No Alias tonight, I’m going to bed.
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| ROUND 1 |
203 |
186 |
213 |
248 |
234 |
218 |
223 |
1525 |
52nd |
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Thursday, December 7 -- Round of 64 Block 1
Today I crossed with Dale Traber, Michael Haugen Jr. and Jonathan Van Hees. I knew that Dale and Haugen would be right of me and Van Hees would probably be left of me. That gave me a pretty good read all the way around. I started with a T-Road ( low-hole with 2000 abralon surface ). That ball gave me just enough burn in the midlane that it really tamed it down in the backend. The only problem was that the bridge and area above the fingers blew up during practice. This was another one of the balls that we drilled in Buffalo and we’ve had problems with all of those. Schlem did his best to glue it together, but I was forced to start with a T-Struck. I started off standing at 25 and going through around 10 at the arrows. My breakpoint was basically the gutter. It wasn’t difficult to throw it in this week ( there were a ton of gutterballs ), but you still had to bump it off the gutter downlane.
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Game 1 ( 203 ) – I started with a T-Struck and left a 3-6-7 on just a bad shot. The glue on my T-Road dried, so I went right back to it. I left a ring 10 in the 3rd, a 2-8-10 in the 4th and solid 9s in the 6th and 11th. The left lane got tight very fast and I had to move right with my feet and target after every shot on that lane.
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Game 2 ( 186 ) – Another one of my typical games. Nine good shots for 180 doesn’t quite get the job done. I left a solid 9 in the first and 10-pins in the 3rd, 5th, 10th and 11th. A 3-6-7-10 in the 8th was a careless shot and I paid dearly for it. I had to creep left during this game, which I didn’t expect to see so fast.
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Game 3 ( 213 ) – This game was a barrel of fun !!! First of all, Lane 8 was like bowling uphill in the snow. I heard last night during practice that Lane 8 never hooked. I can see what they were talking about now. I started with a 2-4-8 on that lane, then proceeded to leave 10-pins in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th and 11th. So I actually had a 4-bagger and a triple, just not the kind I was hoping for.
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Game 4 ( 248 ) – This pair was the first “clean” pair that I hit. Finally I got comfortable on both lanes and was able to just bowl. I rang a 10-pin in the 2nd and left back to back blower-7’s in the 6th and 7th.
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Game 5 ( 234 ) – I was still using my T-Road, but the farther right I was forced it started to burn up a little too much. The ball was losing energy too fast and wouldn’t go through the pins at all. I started with 10-pins in four of the first five frames, then I switched to a T-Struck to finish the game out.
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Game 6 ( 218 ) –
I stayed with the T-Struck, but I had to start moving back left and open the lane up a bit more. I left 10-pins in the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th and a blower-7 in the 11th thrown in for good measure.
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Game 7 ( 223 ) – Heartbreaking !!! I was finally starting to make a minor move up the leader board and I was off to a good start this game, but a blower 7-10 in the 10th took the wind out of my sails. That was a devastating way to end the block. Instead of shooting 250 and ending up around +150, I sat at +125 for the block and in 12th place. The 32nd place number was +204 after the first seven games. I needed a huge block on my worst pattern to advance. Somehow I needed to figure out a way to average what my high game was for the first round. Not too promising ! Schlem and I headed out to Olive Garden for lunch, the only problem was we couldn’t find it. I had seen one over by the mall, but I had no clue where it was. Maybe somebody moved it on us ??? Anyway, we settled for a local Brew Pub that was in a pretty cool little “strip-mall village” area. The Brew Pub actually had very good food ( at least the soup and salad was good ). We discussed some options for the night block, but mainly focused on our main priority…Baseball. With the winter meeting going on, we were constantly checking on progress of our teams. I’m a huge Rangers fan and he’s a Cardinal fan and we both need pitching bad. So we’ve been checking ESPN.com and several other websites keeping up with whats going on. We had laid out a couple of balls before we left, so we headed back so I could work them out. We replaced the damaged T-Road and we drilled a Pyro, hoping I could find lightening in a bottle somehow.
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| ROUND 2 |
218 |
212 |
160 |
257 |
279 |
243 |
257 |
1626 |
3151 |
37th |
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Thursday, December 7 -- Round of 64 Block 2
I actually started the night block with the new Pyro and I looked great in practice. We hit it with 2000 abralon and it was very smooth and predictable. I was playing the lanes similar to how I started this morning, but my attack was less angle downlane.
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Game 1 ( 218 ) – You guessed it, solid 9 in the first ! What a way to start, huh ? I rebounded with a much needed five bagger, but left a 4-9 in the 7th. Then in the 9th, disaster struck. I don’t even know what to say about what happened. I felt like I made a good shot, but when the ball got to the breakpoint it just kept going. I left a 1-2-6-8-10 and got only 1 of them.
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Game 2 ( 212 ) – 2-4-8 in the 1st, ring-10’s in the 4th and 8th and another confusing shot in the 9th. I left a washout this time, but converted it. I left a 4-pin in the 10th and out of frustration I flagged it.
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Game 3 ( 160 ) – Total disaster ! I left three 2-8-10s and a 2-10 in the 10th. I used three different balls and left 2-10 combinations from 4 different angles. This pair just didn’t want to hook off of the gutter. I think the high game on the pair was around 190. I was totally lost here, and this game pretty much took me out of it.
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Game 4 ( 257 ) – After the 160 game I had no clue what to do. I guessed and went back to my T-Road, moving right. I left a 4-pin in the 4th, and got a little firm in the 10th leaving a 2-8. Even though I had my high game of the day, I was still a long way out of the cut.
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Game 5 ( 279 ) – I continued on with the T-Road, playing this pair the same as the last. I rang a 10 in the second and left a blower 7 on the fill ball. Again, its hard to get your hopes up when you’re still 100 pins out.
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Game 6 ( 243 ) –
I figured if I was going to have a shot at the Top 32, I would need a couple of 260-270 games at least. I started off with back to back blower-7’s, then left a 4-7-9 in the 5th. That shot pretty much sealed my fate.
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Game 7 ( 257 ) – My finish tonight was eerily similar to the finish in Vernon Hills. I hadn’t been looking at the scoreboard, but I just knew I needed them all to have a chance to make it. I started off with the front seven, but rang a 10 in the 8th. That was probably the best shot I’d made all game, but it wasn’t meant to be. As it turns out, if I would’ve shot 300 I would’ve been the number.
After I got done I just left and went back to the hotel. This is started to really wear on me in a negative way. After a while, no matter what you do feels wrong. Every decision and every adjustment I make seems bad for some reason. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out why certain things work for some guys and not others. What makes TJ so good ? I crossed next to TJ and we talked about a lot of things all night. He brought up an interesting thought and that’s adjusting the oval angle on my thumb. I may try that tomorrow, along with several other things. Right now I’m just watching Alias and going to bed soon. I’m not in the mood to go anywhere or do anything, so I’ll be staying in the rest of the night.
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Friday, December 8th
I was still pretty down about last night, so I just hung around the room and you guessed it……watched more Alias. I sure hope everybody doesn’t beat me up like they did Eugene on the PBA Forum for doing nothing but watch TV. I assure you, it isn’t as bad as it seems, but we do have a lot of down time and I choose to spend my time catching up on the TV shows that I don’t get to watch on a weekly basis. I debated on whether to go do laundry, go practice or just lie around and
relax….and relaxing won out. I finally headed over to the bowl to watch the end of the Round of 16 and I spent some time on the player services truck talking to Keith Brovald ( the master technician out there ). We talked about my grip and how it affects my release. We decided to cut my oval angle back 10 degrees and take the increase the hole by 1 pilot size and .015 in width, hoping that it would allow me to clear the thumb easier and give me more freedom to keep my hand behind the ball longer. When the Round of 16 was over I headed down to practice. Sure enough, I flew out of the thumb. That was a feeling I hadn’t felt before. I had always kept my thumb extremely snug to eliminate squeezing and unnecessary grip pressure, but what I was really doing was locking myself into the ball and I had to use to much hand/elbow/wrist just to get it off of my hand. It took me a little bit of time to get the feel for it, but there was no discomfort of any kind. Then we got to work on my spine tilt and the position of the hand. We spent a couple of hours working on a few things, most importantly hand position. I started working on “flipping” the ball off of my hand instead of hitting up on it. This created a lot more forward roll and brought my track up a lot closer to the thumb. There was a noticeable difference in a very short time. I might finally be getting the trick ! After practice I took a few more balls out to Keith and Mike in the truck to slug and re-drill for tomorrow. I’m going to work a little more on this during the pro-ams and go from there. I sat around and watched the majority of the Round of 8. Pete caught a really bad pair for him, with the heads bouncing really bad on the right lane. That took him out of the comfort zone that he had all week, and ultimately may have cost him the match. Parker bowed great, but I would’ve liked to have seen how the match would’ve turned out with Pete being able to do what he had been doing. My other interest was on my roomie who was bowling Tommy Delutz. Sean won his match in six, so he’ll be on the show Sunday. I may just have to make an appearance now. Of course I wish him the best of luck and if he wins I’ll make him buy dinner ! I just came back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the night. I’ve got some work to get caught up on and then I’m going to bed. Two pro-ams tomorrow and I’m going to have to mix in laundry sometime. I’m out of socks and underwear !!! |
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Saturday, December 9th
I went to the bowl fairly early this morning because we re-slugged four balls with the new specs last night and I needed to work them out before my pro-ams. My goal for today was to continue to work on what we started yesterday, while trying to do my best during the pro-am. It’s tough to do both at the same time sometimes because you’re expected to strike on every shot and when you don’t, you feel like you’re letting your “ams” down. The early pro-am was pretty packed and took a while to bowl. We were bowling on our pattern today, so I actually got some work in on something that will help me progress. I felt about 50/50 on the things that we’ve been working on, but most importantly was the fact that the ball felt very comfortable in my hands. The pro-am itself was a good time and I think everybody down on our end enjoyed themselves. Norm was to my left and he was entertaining as always. Sometimes I catch myself just watching like every
other fan. From my standpoint, its pretty cool to get to do this job surrounded by the guys that I grew up watching. I guess I’m pretty lucky. After the first pro-am, I ended up going back to the hotel to watch some TV and ended up falling asleep. After a short nap I headed back to the bowl for the late pro-am. Jack Jurek asked me to bowl his pro-am for him tonight so he could drive home to Buffalo ( we basically traded pro-ams, since he will bowl one for me next week ). By the time we got started at 7:30 the pattern was broken down quite a bit, and the lanes were really starting to hook. This gave me an opportunity to work on things from a different angle. For the most part things felt okay, at least better than what they were. I actually had a very good time during the evening pro-am and met some very nice people. Afterwards I met the boys at Hooters for a late dinner, then we just came back to the hotel and hung out in the bar for a while. I still haven’t done laundry yet, so I guess I’ll be doing it tomorrow after the show. |
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Sunday, December 10th
Not much going on today at all. I got up this morning and started watching the last few episodes of Alias. I ran to Subway to grab some lunch, then came back to watch the show. My roommate Sean made the show and bowled two unbelievable games on his way to his second title. First of all I’d like to congratulate Sean on a great week, second I’d like to say that he’s definitely buying dinner !!! I know that Sean’s actions on the show have caused quite a stir on the bowling message boards and I’ll say this: Sean’s a great kid with a good heart. Sometimes I think he lets his emotions get the best of him. I know he doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s young and tremendously talented. Along with that comes a certain degree of what most people would call cockiness ( I consider it confidence ). We are probably total opposites the way we carry ourselves on the lanes, but we want the same thing. Different personalities come across in different ways, especially on television. Unfortunately most bowling fans derive their opinions of players only by what they see on TV. There are several guys that I didn’t like, based on what I had seen on TV. But when I met them my opinions were changed. I’ll also say that I’m very envious of him. He’s accomplished a great deal in a short period of time, and I’d love to be in his shoes right now. Holding up that trophy has to be a tremendous feeling and I’m hoping to have that someday ( soon I hope ). After the show was over, I finally headed out to do almost two weeks of laundry. That took all of about two hours, then it was back to the hotel to watch football. Today has been pretty boring, but hopefully tomorrow will be much better. I think Sean, his mom and I are heading into Washington DC to do some sightseeing for the day. Hopefully the weather will be as good as it was today ! I’ve never been to Washington DC, so I’m hoping to see the Smithsonian as well as several other sites. That could make for an interesting report for tomorrow. I just finished packing my stuff up for the week and I’m getting ready to shut down for the night.
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Monday, December 11
Wow !!! Today was an absolutely great day. Woke up this morning and we headed down to Washington DC to spend the day. It took about an hour to get there, but it was well worth the drive. We grabbed some lunch at the Ronald Reagan building, then took off walking. We visited some great sites like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Monument, the World War II and Vietnam Memorials, got to see the White House and spent some time at the National Archives Building checking out the Declaration of Independence. The Lincoln Monument was especially cool for me, since I’m from the Land of Lincoln. I was actually part of the restoration on Lincolns Home years ago through our family’s lumber yard. I’ve always been fascinated by that part of our country’s history and it was really cool to get to see the sites. I only wish that we had more time to see everything. After we walked around for 5 hours or so, we headed up to Georgetown for dinner at this incredible Italian Restaurant. That was probably the best meal that I’ve had in a long, long time. After dinner we made the hour trip back up to Baltimore and headed back to the hotel for the night. We’re leaving for Long Island in the morning, so I’m wrapping a few things up for the week and then I’m done for the night.
This pretty much concludes my report for this week. It wasn’t a very successful week for me, but if a few things come together I may be able to turn this thing around. Right now I’m 40th in points, which is the Exempt Tour cut line. The bad news is that I’m on the bubble 1/3 of the way through the season. The good news is that its ONLY 1/3 of the way through the season and historically I’ve had better second halves than firsts. Lets hope that rings true again this year. Next weeks report will be coming from Long Island, NY……so until then as always, Bowl up a Storm!!!
Also don’t forget to check out www.stormbowling.com for the weekly Schlemer Report. |
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