This weekends event was at AMF Desert Hills. It has been awhile since we have had an event at this center. The event drew 80 total entries (55 qualifying and 25 economy parlay), had 24 cashers, a 1 in 3.4 cash ratio and paid out over $4,000.00 in main and side event prize fund. The players bowled on a 35ft boardwalk oil pattern that played a bit harder then usual. This pattern can tend to be high scoring, because it allows some miss room to the right if the player is able to get far enough to the right. That did exist on some of the pairs, but other pairs didn’t have it. It seems that the longer and longer that centers have these same lane beds, the topography across the house gets more and more different. This causes the differences from pair to pair to be larger. When house shots are used, it’s easier for lane topography differences to be less noticeable because the oil pattern itself has such a huge influence on the ball because the pattern ratio is so much higher at 9 to 1 or 10 to 1. Sport patterns are much flatter, and thus have less of an influence on the ball reaction which allows the differences in lane topography to be much more noticeable. The average cut scores for the weekend were around +30 even though it was a shorter easier pattern.
We had some parlay power players in Lea Mester and Eddie Thompson. They both turned their $25 into a spot in the quarter finals and a chance at the $800 first place price. Unfortunately, both of them came up short. We also want to congratulate everyone who made it to their first quarter finals or their first quarter finals in quite a while. Congrats to Mitchell Barcus, Dan Lanious, Eddie Thompson and Ramona Van Buskirk! Dan made it the furthest out of that group with an impressive finish in the C division semi-final match. He also only lost that match by a very small margin of a few pins! Congrats Dan! We also want to welcome some new bowlers to the SFT AHT Family from this weekend. Romana Van Buskirk, Jarrett Green, and Jessica Zirk all bowled in their first tournament this weekend! We hope you all enjoyed yourself, and we want to congratulate Ramona on making it to the quarter finals in her first event! Pretty impressive!
The quarter finalists bowled on the fresh board walk oil pattern and it seemed that every division finalist led by a good margin and really had the lanes figured out and the other semi-finalists barley squeaked by to advance. Based on this you would think that the all of the #1 seeds would win all of their matches, but match play is a whole different animal. In the A division it was #1 seed Jason Tunay vs Joe Ashley, B division #1 seed Derek Hamm vs Michael Sylve, and C division #1 seed Dan Lanious vs Timothoy Satmoba. The C division didn’t have the #1 seed advance, as Tim Satomba was able to barley beat Dan out by a few pins in the 10th frame. The B division match wasn’t as exciting with Derek Hamm bowling a very impressive 243 game to advance. The A division match was extremely exciting with Joe Ashley only needing a strike in the 10th or 9/ and strike in the 10th to win. His first shot went high, he got 9 which meant he hadn’t lost yet. He was able to convert the spare, and now needed a strike in the fill to win by one. His shot, went high, just like his last one, but this time only knocked down 8 pins, which meant he lost his match by 1 pin and Jason Tunay would advance to his 6th SFT AHT title match.
The final match started off very shaky for all of the finalists. Tim struck a couple times but a frame with two gutters really slowed him down. Derek, who would have been the “favorite”, started off open, open. Jason who was giving up the most handicap opened 3 times in the first 5 frames as well. Everyone was bowling poorly, but they all were still alive in the match. By the time they get to the 9th, Tim had opened too many times to still be in the match and it was going to come down to Derek and Jason in the 9th and 10th frame. Derek struck in the 9th to give him a double going into the 10th, and Jason needed to strike in the 9th to keep pressure on Derek. Jason threw a great shot, but left a 10 pin with a messenger coming across a little bit, but not making it all the way across. This meant that Derek only needed to mark in the 10th and he threw a shot that hit the pocket, had the 7 and the 10 standing for a moment, but then slowly the 7 fell and then the 10 after giving Derek the AMF Desert Hills title and $800!
Thanks to everyone for coming out this weekend to support the event. We look forward to seeing you next weekend at Brunswick Via Linda lanes!
