Match Doesn’t Hang in Balance for Long

Tony Reyes had walked a tightrope all week in qualifying to get to the finals of the AC Delco All-Star Classic bowling tournament at Cal Bowl in Lakewood.

On Saturday, Reyes continued to walk a tightrope through the first, second and third playoff rounds to a championship match with Tommy Delutz Jr., whereupon . . .

“Ditch ball,” Reyes said after he had lost, 223-186.

Reyes’ first ball of the most important match of his life headed right, failed to grab Lane 32 and curl into the pocket as had so many of his throws and dived into the gutter.

No pins.

And then only six pins on his second throw for an open frame.

And then he was down, 30-6, when Delutz, who had practiced alone behind a television curtain as the top-seeded player while Reyes had worked his way into the final, opened with three consecutive strikes.

“I didn’t throw a gutter ball all week,” said Reyes, a first-year pro from San Jose. “Some of my friends will remember the gutter ball more than my finishing second.”

It was Reyes’ best finish on the Professional Bowlers Assn. tour.

The victory, worth $31,000, was Delutz’s first in the PBA. In nine years on the tour, he had made eight other TV rounds-- the standard for success in the sport--but reached the final only once, losing miserably, 234-153, to Walter Ray Williams Jr.

“Everybody said it,” said Delutz, of Flushing N.Y. “You pick up the bowling paper and read you can’t bowl well on TV.”

Delutz had bowled a 300 game early in the week in a pro-am, then two other 300s and a 299 game in qualifying. He had gained the top seeding with an 8,329 pinfall in 32 matches, 92 more than second-leading qualifier Williams and 408 more than Reyes, the eighth and final qualifier.

Reyes advanced through Saturday’s first round with a strike on a one-ball roll-off with Steve Jaros, the second round by beating Norm Duke and Chris Barnes, and the third round by beating Williams and Steve Hoskins.

But he made it easy for Delutz with one roll into the gutter, though Delutz didn’t really know it.

“I don’t watch the other player,” he said. “I try to concentrate on my own game. I stare at my watch, at a spot on the floor, anything. I didn’t know what he had done until about the fifth frame.”

By then TV had broken for a commercial with Delutz leading, 117-89, and on his way to a championship.