PRO BOWLING AT TORRANCE : Walter Ray Williams in Familiar Spot

“Sooner or later, I’ll break the jinx,” said Walter Ray Williams coming off the lanes Wednesday at Gable House Bowl in Torrance.

The Stockton pro led the field of 160 bowlers after two rounds and 12 games of the $175,000 AC-Delco Tournament. Five of Williams’ games were over 250, the highest a near-perfect 290.

Texan Robert Lawrence trailed the leader by 32 pins. PBA Hall of Famer Marshall Holman and Lancaster’s Joe Merrill were among the leaders.

Lawrence and Bob Benoit each scored a 300 game.

The lead is a position familiar to Williams, 36. The problem bothering him for 3 1/2 years has been coming close to titles, only to be edged out of the big money in the final frames.

“I make the No. 1 seed for the TV finals and get tapped (leaving one pin standing) on good pocket hits while opponents get Brooklyns (wrong pocket strikes),” Williams said.

He recalled Joe Berardi beating him with a couple of Brooklyns in the 1988 Professional Bowlers Assn. title match at Gable House, and Amleto Monacelli getting a Brooklyn last year at Wichita, where Williams’ solid pocket hit left the 7-10 split in the final frames.

“I’m not taking anything away from Joe and Amleto,” Williams said. “They won and deserved it. But this second-place stuff is happening to me even at horseshoes.”

He referred to his averaging 85.8% ringers leading to the final of the 1990 World Horseshoe Championships at Stone Mountain, Ga. His opponent, Ohioan Jim Knisely, had averaged 82.6% to gain the title match, yet won with a somewhat unexpected 88% performance.

The four-time world horseshoe pitching champion has done equally well in bowling, having won five PBA titles before the slump. He was U.S. bowler of the year in 1986 and had the second-highest PBA average of 216.84 in 1990.

The 6-foot-2, 187-pound Williams, a right-hander, has resorted to running two miles daily and lifting weights to strengthen his bowling arm. He said he got a little wet running around Torrance in the rain between squads Wednesday.