Changing Lanes

By Dave Denison

Bowling is famously resistant to change. In our new issue, Dave Denison wonders how long the sport can survive, as vulture capitalists buy up alleys around the country.

I TOLD MYSELF IT WAS A MATTER OF GAINING “tournament experience.” The bowling coach in my head was barking encouragement. Get out there and compete. You miss every shot you don’t take. You think you’re a good bowler? How well can you bowl when there’s money on the line? But by now, after a couple decades of trying, I have low expectations. I’m an underachiever under pressure. I’ve bowled poorly in every tournament I’ve ever entered. This one would be the same.

It was the first day of March, and I was driving two hours north to Vermont from my home in Massachusetts to take part in the fifty-second annual Green Mountain Open. By the time I got to the Rutland Bowlerama, the sleet had turned to spitting snow. Getting out of my car, I took a moment to admire the vintage sign that beckons to drivers along this commercial strip: four jumbo colored letters that spell bowl, with the O in the shape of a black bowling ball. I wheeled my ball caddy into the Bowlerama. It carries my best strike ball, a fifteen-pound Hammer Black Widow, and two fourteen-pound balls I use for spares.

Inside, the noon squads were in full swing. The roll and the clatter. To me, the place looked like the perfect bowling center: traditional but modern, with thirty-two well-lit lanes. Buzzing with activity. My usual pre-bowling mood—why am I doing this?—instantly changed to this is exactly where I want to be. I sized up the bowlers. Men and women of all styles, mostly middle-aged or older. There were five-person teams down toward one end and doubles teams filling up most of the rest of the lanes. I was set to bowl in the singles competition at 2:30 p.m. I noticed a banner above the pins in the middle lanes commemorating a rare event: a local bowler named Jon Wilbur rolled a 900 series here on January 14, 2019. That’s the pinnacle of bowling: three consecutive 300 games, which means thirty-six strikes in a row. There are only forty bowlers in America who have achieved that feat in the last three decades, according to the United States Bowling Congress (USBC), which maintains records and sets the rules for league bowling and tournaments.

“This is what is called for in tournament play: you have to be touched by an angel.”

I headed down to the office marked “Tournament Director” and introduced myself to presiding honcho Tom Smyrski. Yes, he had received the entry form I’d faxed to him in February; all that was left now was paying the $36 fee and getting my lane assignment. Reentries were allowed, meaning if I didn’t like the result of my three games, I could pay another $36 and bowl again in the 4:30 p.m. slot. For that matter, I could come back later in the season; the tournament ran on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays all the way through May 4. The prize fund, assuming this year’s number of entries would be similar to last year’s, was estimated to be around $60,000. That gets divided up between a lot of winners and strong finishers. Let’s just say if I’d happened to get an extremely hot hand and notched the highest score in the singles category—and nobody from then until May topped it—I could have walked away with about $2,000.

I did not register such a score, of course. In fact, I bowled below my regular league average in the first two games and only managed a ho-hum 197 in the third. Alternating between two lanes, as one does in competitive play, I bowled with three gentlemen from Connecticut. They introduced themselves. I remarked to the one named Lou Weber that he had a good name for a bowler; Dick Weber was one of the greatest bowlers in the sport’s heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. His son Pete Weber is perhaps the most famous pro bowler in America today, known to even non-bowlers because of the viral video of the time he won a tournament with a clutch strike in his final shot. Pumping his fist and gesticulating wildly, Weber turned toward a young fan he thought was rooting against him and shouted the now-immortal koan, “Who do you think you are? I am!” Lou Weber laughed and said he wished he was from that Weber family.

As I struggled to find a good shot, I glanced up at the monitor a couple lanes to my right and noticed that a woman named Darlene, looking like she had just walked off the set of Laverne and Shirley, was hitting all her spares and closed out with six straight strikes. This is what is called for in tournament play: you have to be touched by an angel. You’ve got to be in the zone. You have to bowl above your usual capabilities—in all three games.

Continue reading “Changing Lanes,” an essay by Dave Denison, on our site.

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