Brunswick Via Linda - 10/26/2017

Our event this weekend was at Brunswick Via Linda lanes and we had another great turn out with 108 total entries (81 qualifying and 27 economy parlay), 29 total cashers, a 1 in 3.6 cash ratio and paid out over $5,000.00 in main and side event prize fund. We were also excited to pay out $1,000.00 for first place since there were enough qualifyig entries! The players bowled on a pattern, that I don't think we have bowled on yet, the 48ft Brunswick Max. This pattern is a bit different in the fact that it is very long but doesn't use a lot of volume for the length. This creates an odd transition as the lanes "dry out" but they dry out in the middle and front part of the lane. This causes the ball too hook early, so you have to move left. However, with most patterns you can continue to loop the ball more and more as they get drier because there are enough boards with no oil on them for the ball to continue hooking. This pattern had oil still down lane quite a bit, so when the ball hooked more you couldn't simply throw it more to the right (for right handers) because it would really come back. The players had to move left, away from the early hook, but still keep the same kind of angle they used before, which is sometimes called a parallel adjustment. This is a patten where you can start to see your weaknesses with how far left you can move. It won't take long for you to have to get into 4th and 5th arrow where many bowlers are uncomfortable or just flat out won't move there.

While the fresh had players having success from all angles, the late squad pretty much forced players to get left of 2nd and 3rd arrow. However, most of the players that did score well for the event were players who naturally liked to keep their angles more closed down. With this long pattern, no matter how many games are bowled on them you typically always have to keep your angles through the front part of the lane straight because the pattern is so long that the ball can't really hook much down lane. It's often the the really rev dominant power player is excited for long patterns and some of them do very well, but typically the key regardless of style is being able to be comfortable not looking the ball a ton.

As always, we want to welcome our first time bowlers to the SFT AHT family! Welcome Andy Hakiel, Stephanie Hamric, Manuel Tarves, and Amy Owens to our little bowling fam! We hope you all had a good time at your first event and we look forward to seeing you at the next one! Also congrats to Andy who was the only one out of the group to advance to the quarter finals in his first ever event! Also congrats to Zach Beckett, Chad Clapp, and Eric Flick on advancing to the quarter finals through the economy parlay! We almost always have 1 bowler that advances by winning the parlay and bowling well again, but it's not often that we see three different people do it! Congrats! Nice bowling to everyone!

The quarter finals, like the rest of the event, was medium to high scoring with the standings be pretty tight and being determined the final game of the quarters. In the A division, with only 8 players, we advanced to the top 2 which were Shawn Kearney and John Cross. Shawn was the #1 seed and both players were looking for their first title. In the B division, we had #1 seed Ron McDonald taking on Lynn Arthur and James Roethle. Lastly, in the C division we had #1 seed Chad Clapp vs Jericho Brown and Patrick Sheridan! The A division match was fairly close with John Cross just sneaking out the win in the last couple frames against Shawn. The B division match was extremely exciting, it had Lynn get off ot the early lead with a spare and a string of strikes. However, then a couple opens by him and some strikes by Ron and James allowed all three of them to be right in contention going into the 10th frame. Ron finished first and went through the nose leaving a split but having pins fall pretty late to leave him a makeable spare. He was able to mark and fill the 10th which gave him a chance to win, but he would need both James and Lynn to open. James finished first leaving a makeable 2 pin combination, but chopping it to give Lynn the last chance at beating Ron. Lynn only needed a mark and also went through the nose leaving the 3-10 combination. He gave it a good shot and looked confident, it looked like it was on line but just a bit long and missed the 3 pin giving Ron the win in an exciting match! The C division was fairly close between Jericho and Patrick but Patrick was able to come away with the win!

The final match was a bit of back and forth but not much, with John staying clean and throwing a string to take the lead. He then never made any huge mistakes to lose the lead and the other players never really put any additional pressure on him. This allowed John Cross to cruise to his first ever SFT AHT title and a nice $1,000.00 first place prize! Also, congrats to Ron McDonald on 2nd and Patrick Sheridan on 3rd! Thanks to everyone that came out this weekend to make this such a successful event! we look forward to the conclusion of our 2017 season. Check out our schedule for all of the final events!