Our event this weekend was at AMF Tempe Village and it was a BIG ONE! We had a whopping 114 entries through 3 squads, which consisted of 80 qualifying entries and 34 economy parlay entries. This created a huge payout of over $6,000.00 in main and side event prize fund! The players bowled on a very tough 45ft Dragon oil pattern that forced most players to play the middle part of the lane. It was very difficult to play to the right unless you were pointing it right at the head pin. Most of the player’s that had success were in around the 3rd and 4th arrow. The cut scores for the weekend were around the +40 range which only requires bowling a little bit over average for the 3 game set.
We had some new bowlers come out for their first event this weekend! We want to welcome Clarence Young, Gary Spinler, Jennifer Byrd, and Xavier Altamirano. We hope all of you had a good time in your first event. We typically have at least one new bowler that advances, but in this case we didn’t. We did have some economy parlay power players in Eddie Thompson, Chris Tucker and Howard Strause. We also had some first-time quarter finalists in Robert Berhendt! Congrats to everyone on those accomplishments! This might be the first event we have ever had with two players in the finals that got there all the way from the parlay! Who were they? Keep reading to find out!
The quarter finals was bowled on a fresh condition and because of that scores were a bit lower. Bowling average pretty much allowed most to move on to the semi-final round. I think after back to back weeks of long patterns, everyone is ready to see their ball hook a little bit more. After the quarter finals, we had #1 seed Mike Fitzgerald vs #2 seed Sean Ashley for the A division finals, #1 seed Eddie Thompson vs #2 seed Mike Hodge in the C division and #1 seed CJ Black vs #2 seed Howard Strause in the B division finals. We had two #2 seeds win and one #1 seed. Sean Ashley won a very close match against Mike, and Howard Strause took advantage of some early open frames to become the B division champion. The only #1 seed to win was Eddie Thompson who seemed to be on fire all day long.
This put Eddie Thompson vs Howard Strause vs Sean Ashley in an interesting final match. Howard and Eddie both bowling in their first title match looking for their first title, and Sean Ashley looking for his 3rd SFT AHT title and to make a big move in the SFT AHT overall player of the year points race. The match started off pretty even between Eddie and Howard, but Sean opened in the 4th and since he was getting the least amount of handicap, it put him behind tremendously. Howard then put together a three bagger in the 5th-6th-7th, which with his double early in the game gave him a good boost to take the lead and he only needed to stay clean to take home the title. His first shot in the 10th was picture perfect finishing high flush and striking giving him the win and $1,000.00! In clutch and dramatic fashion Sean Ashely ended up striking out in the 10th frame to force Eddie to mark to take second. Eddie left the 2-10 split, but didn’t look like he gave up on it. He made a run at the split and converted it to take 2nd place from Sean which gave Eddie 2nd place and allowed CJ Black to retain the lead in the Player of the Year points race. A second-place finish for Sean would have had him go around CJ by 5 points for the lead. The POY races are certainly shaping up to be exciting finishes.
Thanks to everyone for coming out and making the event such a successful one! We look forward to seeing you all at our event next weekend at AMF Peoria lanes!
