BOWLING FOR THE HOUSE : Couple Put Their Alley Up for Grabs, but They Won’t Wind Up in the Gutter

Bowling news: Quiring Lanes of Marathon, Fla., is holding a tournament. First prize is Quiring Lanes of Marathon, Fla.

There’s more. First prize also includes the snack bar, the pro shop, the rental shoes, the ball-polishing machine and any leftover pretzels. The whole shebang is worth something like $800,000.

What is second prize, a dry cleaners?

No, second prize is $112,500, which behooves one to go for first prize if one has a notion to get into the bowling proprietorship business.

This idea is the biggest thing to hit bowling since the automatic pin setter. Imagine the spinoffs: Win a golf tournament, keep the golf course. Win a football game, keep the stadium. Win a road race, keep the road. It is the natural offspring of war: Win a battle, keep the town.

Of course, if you win the Quiring tournament but do not happen to have use or room for a bowling alley at the present time, you can have $500,000 instead.

This latter option would be much appreciated by the people who are throwing the tournament, Pam and Dave Quiring, who are praying to St. Brunswick that you take the cash, since they do not want to fork over their bowling alley.

Bowlers themselves--she carries a 170 average, he a 190--the Quirings are owners and operators of Quiring Lanes. Have been for eight years. They find themselves caught up in a situation as nasty as a 7-10 split.

When they put their alley up as a prize, it was a publicity lark. They figured people would chuckle at the idea of winning a bowling alley but most certainly would opt for the cash instead. Imagine their surprise to find that almost everybody they’ve spoken with most certainly will opt for the alley.

“This is what every bowler wants, his own alley,” said Pam, none too glibly. “All our customers are coming in and saying stuff like, ‘Well, if I win, I’m going to change this around, and I wouldn’t serve that, and maybe this part would be no smoking.’ They all want the bowling alley, not the money.”

So, what the Quirings are trying to do is get corporate America to raise the cash prize to $1 million. Then maybe people would take the money and let them keep their alley. Unfortunately, corporate America keeps forgetting to return their calls.

But even if the Quirings spend the rest of their natural-born days running a bakery, you’ve got to hand it to them. At the very least, this could revolutionize bowling.

Consider that before their tournament came along--officially known as the House of Champions--the largest first-place prize in bowling history was $210,000 last year in the amateurs-only Lucky Strikes American Dream tournament at Elk Grove, Ill. This baby makes the Lucky Strike look like a gutter ball.

You figure that nobody on the Professional Bowler’s Assn. tour has ever broken the $200,000 barrier in a single year. A guy wins the Quiring job, he can bowl through his legs for four years and still be ahead of the game.

“The pros are the most excited about it, because that’s what they’re out there for anyway, to make enough money to buy a place of their own and get off the road,” said Dave.

Of course there is a price to be paid for possibility. You do not get a shot at the Hope diamond by sitting down at the $2 tables. The entry fee is steep, $1,500, but listen, that includes an expenses-paid trip to the Florida Keys, five days and four nights lodging in a pretty swank hotel, and free shoe rental. “The vacation alone is worth $750,” said Dave.

The tournament is open to anybody--man, woman, professional, amateur--up to 2,250 entries.

Amateurs?

“Amateurs,” said Dave. “You’d be surprised how many amateurs out there are great bowlers but aren’t on the tour. Who wants to join the tour? There isn’t enough money in it. There are 50 bowlers in the Miami area alone with an average of 200 or better.”

The tournament will run for six weeks, from May 1 through June 9, with the crescendo arriving when the amateur-bracket winner bowls the pro winner--one game--with everything riding, including the kitchen sink.

But let’s see . . . 2,250 entries, $1,500 entry fee. Our accountant informs us that the Quirings will take in $3.475 million, which could keep them in a lot of nice bowling shirts.

Out of the $3.475 million comes expenses: the cost of the alley ($800,000), the rest of the prize money ($200,000), the travel and the hotel costs ($1.7 million), and extras ($300,000). That means Pat and Dave figure to end up $475,000 ahead.

Of course, they say they’ve already sunk $250,000 of their own cash into the project over the last four years. That takes us down to $225,000. Divide that by four years and it works out to $56,250 a year for their work, or $28,125 a year each.

For that kind of money, they might as well be running a bowling alley.