AMF Desert Hills Results - 11/4/2012

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Well we had a great turn out again at AMF Desert Hills with 70 entries, 22 cashers, 1 in 3 cash ratio, and almost $3,000.00 paid out in our main event. We had another 21 entries in our sweeper and when combined with high game pots, they paid out another $594.00. This event was bowled on a 42ft modified house shot that seemed to be very playable, but it wasn’t wide open. Both days had cuts of around 100 over with some scores that were REALLY HIGH. It was clear that there was some room to play with on the lanes for all styles, but you still had to execute to knock down all 10 pins. We even had someone who almost took advantage of the new Track incentive, of winning a Free Track ball by bowling an honor score. Ben Dewberry had the front 7 strikes with his 505A but a split later on cut him short of a free bowling ball!

This event had many AMF Desert Hills league bowlers come out to represent their home house. All of these bowlers were new members, and I want to welcome them to the family. Phil Thompson, Danielle Daugherty, Rick Elliott, Don Cook, Christopher Coffer, Jesse Hughes, Billy Chester, Rick Byerly, and Bobby McMillion; welcome to the ever expanding SFT AHT community! I hope you all had a great time in your first event, and we all thank you for coming out and bowling with us.

This event had another Parlay success story and it was a huge success, because the bowler parlayed his $25 into making his first quarter finals appearance EVER! That bowler was Danny Del Llano, and he won the Parlay on Saturday but couldn’t capitalize. He learned from his mistakes, came back on Sunday, won the Parlay, bowled his next squad for free, shot +120, advanced to the quarters, and just barely missed making the semi-finals. Danny ended up finishing 4th in the “B” division, and taking home $126.00 off of a very small $25.00 investment. Congrats to Danny, on showing the power of the parlay! He also ended up winning the bowling ball raffle for the Track 912T, so it was a great weekend for him!
We had a very exciting phenomenon occur that doesn’t normally happen, we had almost HALF of the quarter finals field bowling in their FIRST quarter finals EVER! These bowlers were Danny Del Llano, Jesse, Hughes, Phillip Thompson, Rick Elliot, Mike Ramsey, Don Cook, Daniel Daugherty, and Chris Coffer. It was exciting to see so many members making their first quarter finals, and for a lot of these members it was their first event ever bowled. This event was a great of example that it doesn’t matter if you are brand new to the club or if you have bowled every event, you have a great shot at making it to the quarter finals at SFT AHT.

Additionally, we had some very exciting story lines moving into the semifinals. The semi’s in both divisions had 3 bowlers squaring off to be the division champion. The A division had Ben Dewberry trying to put an end to his “bride’s maid blues” and make his first finals this season. It also had Chuck Kremer trying to win his 2nd title this season, and Phillip Thompson, a brand new member representing his home house, looking to make his first finals appearance in his first tournament try. The B division had Bo Copeland and Kevin Enomoto both looking for their first title, and Jeff Brackett who was looking to go back to back from last weekend at Tri-City. The A division finals ended in a very narrow margin with Phil Thompson throwing the last 5 strikes to sneak out a win and defeat his competitors with a score of 240 with handicap. The B division champion wasn’t as close, Jeff Bracket showed his experience in that situation and defeated Bo and Kevin with a nice 243 game with handicap.

This created two interesting dynamics for our final match. First was Jeff, he won at Tri-City last weekend in his home house. At Tri-City, Jeff really had a lot of supporters there rooting him on and used that momentum to win his title. Now in order to go back to back, he would have to beat Phil Thompson who had the same kind of home court advantage mojo going for him. However, it seems Jeff would have the advantage since he has a lot of experience in bowling tournaments and being in the finals. Also, this was Phil’s first competitive tournament over 6 years. Needless to say it was a “David vs. Goliath” kind of match up on paper. However, it was clear early on that Phil was the kind of guy that gets better as the pressure increases. The match was very close all the way to the very end. Phil was slightly behind the whole match but had a huge double in the 8th and 9th that evened the match back up. Jeff got up in the 10th and if he struck out he would have forced Phil to have to strike just as much to beat him. Jeff left a 7 pin, covered it up and finished out the frame. This meant that Phil only needed good count and a mark to win, and Phil made a great shot in the 10th, that struck and sealed up his tournament victory, his first SFT AHT title, $500, and the BIG CHECK!

He also made a lot of the quarter finalists happy because he wasn’t in the progressive pot. This meant that the rest of the progressive pot money he could have won got redistributed to all of the other quarter finalists since the progressive pot gets paid back out 100% at every event. This ended up increasing everyone’s checks by over $20! Congrats to Phil on his victory, and to all of the other bowlers that had a successful event.

We are taking next weekend off, so everyone can get some rest and save their money for our big Thanksgiving Day weekend events. We will then be back on November 17th & 18th at AMF Squaw Peak lanes for another event and our annual membership meeting. The weekend after that will be our big Thanksgiving Day weekend with two different tournaments at AMF Union Hills. Our big event on Thanksgiving Day weekend will feature a guaranteed prize fund with 1st place being $1,500 for first and 2nd place being $750 with progressive pot. Then a fun 40 frame event on Black Friday night. We look forward to seeing you all there or at AMF Squaw Peak in two weeks! Thanks again for reading!

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SFT AHT AMF Desert Hills Tournament Finals