Our event this weekend was at Brunswick Desert Sky lanes. The event drew 84 total entries, had 24 cashers, a 1 in 3.5 cash ratio and paid out over $4,000.00 in main and side event prize fund! The players bowled on a very tough 47ft pattern that had very low scoring on the fresh and slightly higher scoring on the later squads. It wasn’t possible for many players to successfully play right of the 7 or 8 board. Most players were left of the 2nd arrow and it seemed that the players that had softer ball speeds or higher rev rates faired the best throughout the day. Most of the cut scores all day long only required the players to bowl their average. The highest scores for the day were normally players that averaged 10-15 pins a game over their average. It was definitely a tough pattern and was a change of pace for the regulars who haven’t bowled on a long pattern in quite a while.
We had a couple parlay power players in Ray Vance and Peter Trofimuk. They also went deep as Peter made it to the semi-finals and Ray made it to the finals. We also had Ray, Peter, David Vanderleest, Kevin Long and Sergio Lopez who were our first time quarter finalists for the event. It’s always great to see players taking advantage of the affordable parlay and having success as well as seeing new faces have success as well! Nice bowling to all of you!
The quarter finals were pretty low scoring on the fresh 47ft Scorpion oil pattern. The A division cut score was +54, B division +41 and C division +52. Since the handicap is 80% of 210, this means the players were bowling a tiny bit over average to advance to being the top 2 players in the whole tournament in their division. This is a good illustration of how difficult the fresh pattern was. The extra length made it tough until the lanes broke down a little bit. However, in the A division Correen Lieber and Robbie Patterson were the advancers and were quite a bit ahead of the rest of the field. In the B division #1 seed Bill Brackett would take on first time quarter finalists Ray Vance and in the C division #1 seed Peter Trofimuk would take on Ernie Malapo. For the first time in quite a while, we had first time division champions. Correen, Ray and Ernie all won their respective divisions for the first time in each of their SFT AHT careers.
The final match was one person from start to finish. She has bowled quite a few SFT events now without being able to get out of the semi-finals. It was nice to see her commitment finally pay off with a dominating win defeating a tough opponent in Robbie Patterson and then finishing it out with a nice 256 game with handicap. This was her first SFT AHT title match and first SFT AHT title! In 2nd place was Ernie and Ray in 3rd. The prize fund was increased to pay $250 for 3rd, $450 for 2nd and $800 for 1st! Congrats to the finalists and other cashers today! Thanks for coming out and we look forward to seeing you at our next event next Saturday at AMF Deer Valley Lanes.
