According to Bugsy Kelly, Columbia 300 Brand Manager, the tournament got off to a shaky start. Our players were anxious to get the World Series underway, and excited about the new product offerings for us.
“The scoring pace was extremely high and there was no room for a marginal game on the Cheetah. Qualifying on the Cheetah turned out to be really exciting. I think our best chances are yet to come on the next 3 patterns.” – Bugsy Kelly.
Tommy Jones placed 12th on the Cheetah, taking home an $830 paycheck. He was also one of 11 bowlers who shot a perfect 300 game on the Cheetah today.
Joe Ciccone, an independent player, used the Ebonite Gamebreaker part of the day, ending up in 10th place with a $2500 paycheck for the day.
According to Bugsy Kelly, Columbia 300 Brand Manager, the Viper competition proved to be up in the air all day! The tournament literally came down to the last ball.
“I’ve never seen so many position changes in the final game of a tournament. There’s a ton to explain, but you really should take half an hour and watch the final game on PBA’s Xtra Frame because it was incredible. Fagan made it to the show by 1 pin, Dan MacLelland got a horrible break to miss by 7, and Mika came from 8th to make the show with a 260+ final game… it was wild!” – Bugsy Kelly.
Tommy Jones placed 9th today with a score of 3,209, and $2,700 cash – an improvement over the Cheetah finish. Kelly Kulick tied with Tom Hess for 21st on the Viper with a score of 1839 and taking home an $895 paycheck.
Craig Nidiffer, Trenton, Mi., used the Ebonite Gamebreaker to finish in 8th place on the Viper, taking home a nice $3000 paycheck for the day’s work.
The scores were extremely higher during the evening matches than the scoring pace of the earlier matches.
Tommy Jones missed the show by 6 pins for a 5th place finish. Fawaz Abdul from Bahrain doubled in the 10th to shut Tommy out. Tommy bowled great and just came up short. He’ll be back on it for the Scorpion for sure.
Mik Stampe, of Denmark, used the Innovate for part of the day, and earned an 8th place finish, taking home $3000.
The lanes were very similar to last year’s patterns. For the Scorpion pattern, the higher your rev rate the better chance you had to throw strikes.
The show will consist of two 2 handers, a no thumb player and a med to high rev righty. You can tell by that list that we don’t really have anyone with those stats, certainly not the two handers or no thumb bowlers.
Tommy Jones did well through most of qualifying, but a low game 6 really hurt him. Tommy finished 9th, taking home a $2700 paycheck.
The kickoff TV show for this year’s PBA tour is the WTBA Bayer Advanced Aspirin World Bowling Tour Finals. With the announcement early this year that the PBA and the WTBA (World Tenpin Bowling Alliance) had formed an alliance, players were allowed to earn PBA titles at WTBA events. Many players competed throughout the summer overseas in heavy competition to earn points, based on their performance at each event. The top three men and top three women will compete in the WTBA Bayer Advanced Aspirin World Bowling Tour Finals this Sunday, Dec. 9th, at 1:00 PM ET, on ESPN. Tune in to find out who wins!
This year’s World Series has had a lot of ups and downs, but our players have been in contention all week. Going into the World Championships, we had 8 of the top 24 players using our equipment.
Tommy Jones ended up missing the TV show by only 9 pins, but walks away with 6th place in the world, and $8000. He was throwing the Gamebreaker throughout most of qualifying.
“The Game Changer looked good in practice, so we’ve drilled a Persevere for the TV show.” – Kelly Kulick
“I wasn’t able to use the Persevere, so we had to change strategy. During the WBT finals I used a pin up Elevate, no hole, with about 1000 surface on it. I was never able to use the Persevere. I made only one bad shot in frame two and got unlucky in frame 4. It could have gone either way, but I lost in the first match to Liz 268-260.” – Kelly Kulick
“Overall, the scores this week were somewhat unrealistic compared to past World Series competitions. On the Cheetah, for example, you had to average 250 for the top spot to about 240 to cash. Overall, the conditions were more fair than they’ve been in the past; everyone had a genuine chance to cash or even to make cuts.” – Kelly Kulick
“The transition was so quick on the Chameleon that you’re almost hypothesizing what is going to happen. You have to outwit the lane condition in order to be ahead of it. The days of creeping inward no longer exist. It’s 4-1 and 8-3. The moves are larger and at a faster pace.” – Kelly Kulick
“The mid-performance balls, including the Game Changers and Elevates, really came into play all week long. The lanes transitioned very quickly, but the balls made it easy to read the transition and keep the shape that we’re constantly looking for out here.” – Kelly Kulick