Williams Averages 230 and Gains Top Seeding in Pro Bowling Finals

Walter Ray Williams Jr. travels the Professional Bowling Assn. tour with horseshoes in his baggage.

Yet, he would be the last to say that luck had anything to do with the good fortune he enjoyed Friday on the lanes at Gable House Bowl in Torrance.

Not often do pins fall the way they did for the 27-year-old bowler from Stockton. He averaged a 230 over 16 match games, passed Pete Weber and gained the No. 1 seeding for today’s five-man finals in the televised $150,000 AC/Delco tournament.

Williams will wait in the wings for a single showdown game with the survivor of an elimination among Jim Pencak, No. 5; Mark Roth, No. 4; Joe Beraridi, No. 3, and Pete Weber, No. 2. The four will clash in that order.

The tournament leader zoomed to the top by also heavily collecting bonus points in the match play. Match wins are worth a bonus of 30, and Williams won 17 of 24 matches.

Actually, the horseshoes aren’t good luck charms for Williams. He uses them along the city-to-city PBA tour to stay in tune for pitching horseshoes.

For those not up on horseshoes, the Cal Poly Pomona graduate with a degree in physics, has won the world adult title four times after taking the world junior championship three times. He still competes internationally.

“Deliverying a bowling ball is similar to pitching horseshoes with the underhand motion of the arm swing,” Williams says. “I feel that participating in both sports doesn’t hurt my timing and accuracy, but rather compliments them.” Williams has 11 career 300 games in bowling and eight perfect games in horseshoe pitching. His longest streak of bowling strikes is 27. His 72 consecutive ringers (over three games) in official competition ties the World horseshoe tournament record.