New Appreciation for Pro Game

Editor’s note: Times staff writer Thomas H. Maugh II, an amateur bowler who competes in four leagues, has been trying to qualify for the U.S. Open, a Professional Bowlers Assn. tour event underway this week at Fountain Bowl in Fountain Valley. He didn’t make it.

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I may quit bowling.

This has been the most humiliating week of my life.

I believed I was a pretty good bowler. I thought I could go out and bowl a bunch of 180 games, at least. I was sure I could get up and convert single-pin spares to keep myself in competition.

Wrong, wrong, and boy was I wrong.

Consider: In 18 games, I didn’t bowl 200 once. I didn’t have a single three-bagger -- three consecutive strikes. I averaged about two doubles a night. I was missing spares that I could pick up in my sleep in a league session.

I finished the tournament in 313th -- in a field of 347. My average was 168, more than 40 below my league average.

The lane conditions the PBA puts down for the Open are the most difficult it uses all season -- the most common description I heard was “brutal.” Oil is applied to 50 of the lane’s 60 feet, and it is level from one gutter -- excuse me, it’s called a channel nowadays -- to the other. There is no small buildup of oil in the middle to help the bowler, as there is in league bowling. Accuracy is paramount here.

One pro told me it was like drastically narrowing the fairways on a golf course and placing the bunkers at 250 yards, where everybody hits his first ball. (Bowlers like golf analogies, it turns out, because a lot of them play it on the side. Many think it is easier.)

I prefer the putting-green analogy. As I’ve written before, the lane conditions in a normal league are like folding the putting green into a V-shape with the hole in the center. In those terms, a shot at the Open was like placing the hole at the top of a mound with the green sloping away in all directions. Try one-putting on that green.

“They don’t put out a lane pattern to make everybody look good,” as they do in leagues, rookie Brad Angelo said. “They put out a shot to let the cream rise to the surface.”

Or, in my case, to let the lead sink to the bottom.

The pros can respond. PBA stars such as Walter Ray Williams Jr. -- known on the tour as “Deadeye” -- recently went to the Kegel Training Center in Florida, where sensors tracked their balls all the way down the lane. Each threw 10 shots, and every ball was within an 0.9-inch window 15 feet from the foul line. I’m grateful if I can get nine of 10 within a three-inch window at the same distance.

The physical and mental fatigue are tremendous. I bowl six games every Friday night, and it is no big deal. But after three days at the Open, my legs are cramping, my thumb is swollen, my fingers are sore from lifting the ball, and I feel every one of my 59 years. Anybody who says these guys aren’t athletes is full of it.

And note that I didn’t see one beer being drunk during the competition, no pizza being eaten, no cigarette being smoked. Water was the drink of choice. Pepsi, a tour sponsor, brought in 3,000 bottles of water for the bowlers, as well as lots of Pepsi and Diet Pepsi, and all of it was gone by the morning of the third day.

How do you practice for something like this? Unless you work in a bowling alley -- sorry again, bowling center -- you’re going to find it very hard to locate anyplace that duplicates such difficult conditions.

Bowling columnists, old-timers and some industry leaders have long been decrying the “dishonesty” of league lane conditions and the explosion of honor scores to the point where they are almost meaningless. Two years ago, the America Bowling Congress responded by urging leagues to use what are now called “sport conditions” -- substantially harder than normal league oil patterns, but nothing like the Open’s lane conditions.

I would like to bowl in one, but I fear I am too late. Most such leagues are folding or have folded for lack of participation. As several center managers told me, bowlers are not happy when they see their averages drop 30 or more pins.

So, now the field has been cut to 24. I’m home, loading up on ibuprofen. But delusions never die. I can do better. Wait till next year.