After the U.S Open, I needed the week off badly. Emotionally, I needed time to relax and come down from the high of making my first TV show. Physically, I needed time to “heal” up and get myself ready for the last 2 weeks of the season. I spent a very productive week at home, hanging out with the kids and working on things for the charity. Thanks to Randy and Norms comments on the telecast, I received an overwhelming amount of notes, e-mails and comments on the website and the foundation. I also spent some time putting together a list of used bowling balls that I wanted to sell to raise money for the charity. I posted the list on www.ballreviews.com, and within 6 hours I’d already sold 40 balls. I ended up selling 70 overall so far, raising about $4500.00 for the charity. I spent about 2 hours at UPS on Monday, shipping 66 bowling balls all over the country. I also had a great response for the fan club ( visit the CLUB 300 page for details ), so things are going well on that front. I didn’t get any free time to practice, but I did have time to work one day giving lessons. For the most part, my week off was busier than if I’d been on tour that week!!! One a side note, Best Buy got my laptop repaired so I was back up and running in that area

Tuesday, March 14th

I hit the road around 10:00 am for the last 2 weeks of the season, heading to Indianapolis. I’ve had a lot of success at Woodland bowl in the past, including 5th at the World Championships last year, so I was anxious to get this week underway. I forgot about the time change, so I got to the bowl right at 2:00 pm…..just in time to start practicing, Since I hadn’t touched a ball since the Open show, I was very rusty. It took some time to get my feet back under me, but once I did I felt pretty comfortable. Schlem stopped by and said things still looked good, so I packed my stuff up after a couple of hours and headed to the Hampton Inn ( priceline ) to check in. After I unloaded my stuff, I took a short nap before we headed over to Ruths Chris Steak House for dinner. Ryan Shafer and Jason Couch treated a group of us to a great dinner at a great restaurant. After dinner, I headed back to the hotel and started on Season 2 of Las Vegas.

Wednesday, March 15th

I got up early and headed to the bowl to watch the TQR. I sat with Dino for a few games watching, and then headed to Chipotle with Sean and Sarah to grab some lunch. After lunch I headed over to the mall to get a haircut and to walk around wasting time for a while. I went back to the bowl after that and got everything ready for practice session. I practiced for the full 90 minutes, trying to find something that would go through the pins the right way. I tried just about every ball that I had down there with me, but I just didn’t strike very much. Getting to the pocket wasn’t difficult, from multiple angles even, but I just wasn’t seeing the lane the right way I guess. The last half hour was a little better, but we still ended up drilling another T-Road and another Agent to have something different to look at. After practice, the players all got together for a meeting. We had meeting scheduled with commissioner, Fred Schreyer on Thursday evening, so we called a pre-meeting to prepare. I can’t really get into the things that went on, but I can say that these are all things that are crucial to the health and future of the PBA Tour. Too many things are happening that are causing some problems that we just need to get them addressed. We held the meeting at the bowl, and during the meeting Dale Eagle ( Senior PBA Player and Tour photographer ) had a dinner set up for us. It was a great gesture on Dale’s part to provide dinner for us as payback for our help in making his Pro-Am Photo business so successful. The meeting finally wrapped up and I headed back to the hotel.

Thursday, March 16th

I got to the bowl early, worked out the new balls and had a light breakfast. I had some family and friends watching this week, so I had to get my guest list in order. After all of that, I got my stuff together and headed to my starting pair. My game-plan was to play a little straighter to start, then migrate left as the block went on. In practice things looked good, but with a few minutes left we started seeing some hang develop down-lane. I scrapped my game-plan and jumped in, starting with a Shift…..standing around 28 and going through 15 at the arrows. By the way, I was crossing with Steve Jaros, Marv Sargent and Brian LeClair.

Thursday, March 16th -- Round of 64 Block 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 17-18 - 32                  168
Game 1 – 10-pin in the 1st, 4-10 in the 4th, blower 7-10 in the 6th, 3-6 in the 8th, 2-pin in the 9th, washout in the 10th. I thought that moving in was a good move, but I really faked myself out in this game. I made a couple of good shots that resulted in bad breaks, but I made a bad decision to start with. I used an Agent, a Shift and a T-Road during this game. Normally 3 ball changes in one game wont result in much of a score!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 19-20 - 37                 195
Game 2 – 2-pin in the 1st, 4-10 in the 2nd, 2-pin in the 3rd, 4-pin in the 6th, 2-pin in the 7th, 4-pin in the 8th, 10-pin in the 11th. I finally moved back right in the 4th, jumping to around 9-10 at the arrows. I still wasn’t striking much, but I was closer. I also went back to the T-Road Pearl after starting with an Agent.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 25-26 + 21                 258
Game 3 – Blower 7 in the 3rd, 2-pin in the 7th. This game got me going finally. With the scoring pace pretty high, I needed some big games to get me heading up towards the number.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 41-42 + 36                   215
Game 4 – 6-7-10 in the 1st, 2-pin in the 2nd, 10-pin in the 4th & 10th. We made the turn to the high side of the center for this game. Historically this end has hooked a little more and my first shot proved that. It took a few frames to get adjusted, but I finished strong. Missing the 10-pin didn’t help either!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 43-44 + 74                 238
Game 5 – 10-pin in the 3rd, 7th & 9th. Pretty solid game with 3 ring 10s. The pattern was starting to open up a bit by now. I moved in with an Agent on the fill ball to take a look.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 47-48 + 88                 214
Game 6 – Blower 7-10 in the 4th, 3-6-10 in the 6th, 10-pin in the 7th & 9th. The farther left I moved with my T-Road, the worse my ball reaction was getting. I was using a pretty weak T-Road and it just wouldn’t read the mid-lane enough. I switched to an Agent in the 8th and finished up the game with it.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 55-56 + 157 34th                 269
Game 7 – Ringing 10 in the 2nd, solid 9 in the 11th. The switch to the Agent was a good move. I had a lot of push in the middle of the lane and a lot of recovery downlane. This was by far the best pair that we had hit all day. I finished the first round of qualifying at +157 and in 34th place. The number for the top 32 was +159, so I was close after a terrible start. My gameplan for the night round was to be smarter and more patient on the fresh, and more aggressive when the pattern opened up later. Schlem and I headed over to the Fox and the Hound for some lunch and to watch a little College Basketball during the break. I started the night round with my T-Road, determined to start further right and be patient. I wanted to get out of the gates clean, the attack when the lanes opened up. I started playing around 10-12 at the arrows fairly straight. My goal was to just control the pocket, make spares and take the doubles when I could get them

Thursday, March 16th -- Round of 64 Block 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 23-24 + 215                 258
Game 1 – 10-pin in the 2nd, 3-6-10 in the 4th. My game-plan to start paid off due to the fact that this pair didn’t develop a hang spot down-lane like game 1 in the morning round did. It’s amazing how your swing loosens up when you see the ball do what you want it to do.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 27-28 + 231                 216
Game 2 – 2-4-8-10 in the 1st, 4-pin in the 2nd, 10-pin in the 6th, blower 7 in the 9th, 10-pin in the 11th. This pair had a little over-under on it. I was actually pretty happy with the outcome. I made a few bad shots that I got away with, so 216 was certainly acceptable. I ended up using a T-Road on the right lane, and a Spitfire on the left lane.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 29-30 + 268                  237
Game 3 – 4-6-9-10 in the 1st, ring 10 in the 7th, solid 9 in the 9th. I started with the Spitfire, but it was too much on this pair. I went back to the T-Road and finished the game strong. My recent “quick decision making” change is really starting to pay off!!!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 45-46 + 257                 189
Game 4 – Ring 10 in the 1st, blower 7-10 in the 4th, ring 10 in the 5th, blower 7-10 in the 6th, ring 10 in the 9th, blower 7 in the 10th. This is one of those games that you just want to forget about. I left back to back 7-10s on the right lane and never recovered from it. With the scores as high as they were, this didn’t help.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 51-52 + 314                 257
Game 5 – Solid 8 in the 1st, 4-pin in the 3rd, 3-6-10 in the 11th. After the 189 game, I switched to the Agent and jumped in. The pattern had broken down a little faster than earlier and that allowed me to be more aggressive in creating ball reaction. It was time to attack for the rest of the night!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 55-56 + 357                 243
Game 6 – Blower 7-10 in the 3rd, ring 10 in the 8th. Another good pair, just a couple of bad breaks. There were 7-10s all over the place and I had my share. Luckily, the carry percentage was high enough that you could pick up enough 4 or 5 baggers to make up for them.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 13-14 + 415                  258
Game 7 – Ring 10s in the 5th and 10th. Great way to finish the night. Yet another great pair for all of us. Marv Sargent had 300 on this pair. I finished up the night at +415 and in 15th place. Since this was a round robin match play tournament, I needed to stay in the top 16 after the next round. So far I was 2 pins ahead of the number, so there was plenty of work to do. After we were done with qualifying, we all adjourned to the lounge for our meeting with Commissioner Schreyer. The players appointed a 5 person committee to represent the group and those 5 players were: Ryan Shafer, Tommy Jones, Chris Barnes, Tim Criss and myself. We covered a number of topics in the meeting, but didn’t quite get to everything we wanted to discuss. Unfortunately there were a lot of issues left unresolved, but it was getting late so we called it a night at that point. I finally got back to the hotel around 2:00 am.

Friday, March 17th -- Round of 32 -- First Round of Matchplay

I got to the bowl early Friday, grabbed some breakfast and hauled my equipment out to my starting pair. I quickly glanced at my match play schedule and saw that I had a long round ahead of me. The quality of the field was very strong, so I knew I had my work cut out for me. With the 30 bonus pins for each win, I knew that winning games would be crucial. When the scores are high like this week, you cant make up very much ground without the bonus pins. My first game was against Jim Pratt. Jim usually uses plastic when he’s playing out. The problem is that he creates hang for everybody else. I understand that this is an individual sport and you have to do what you have to do, but that doesn’t mean I have like it. I started with my T-Road, playing pretty straight around 10-12 just like I had in previous rounds.