PBA South Cleveland, GA Open - Report
{ 06-29-03 }

Yes, you are reading correctly. I made the 12 hour trek to Northern Georgia, all the way to Cleveland, a small town hidden in the mountains. The bowling center is state of the art, using brand new Brunswick scoring units, and HPL 5000 lanes (with the downlane markers). The bowling center, Yonah Bowl, is actually annexed to a skating rink, Yonah Skate, which next year (yes, I'm going up next year, it was that good of a trip), I will bring my roller-skates (if I remember, or course). The people of Cleveland, GA, and the surrounding area were extremely polite all the time, and it made staying in what I thought was the middle of nowhere, a well deserved vacation, with a bowling tournament.

Anyway, I had C squad for this tournament, starting on lanes 19-20. I was first using my Icon 2, but then switched to a Wicked, which seemed to give me a better ball reaction. I started out with a spare, followed by a three-bagger, and added a double later, only to open in the 10th for a 202. This, unfortunately, was the best game of the day for me, as the next 7 were under 200. The second game I left 4 opens, with a double in the tenth frame. The third game I had one open without any doubles for a high 180 game. In game 4 I opened twice, but scraped out a double in the middle for another 180. In game 5, I left back to back opens in frames 6 and 7 to further hinder my already low score.

Game 6 saw 5 opens, all of them splits. This game was not pretty. Game 7 I had another 5 open frames, and in the last game of the block at the end pair, I had another 4 opens.

So the last 3 games of the block is when the roof caved in, even though I was around the cash number after game 4, if I could have managed to stay even from that point on.

Despite my low overall score, my spare shooting was dead on, missing one makeable spare. As many spares as I saw in Cleveland, that's a pretty good percentage. It's just one or two more strikes a game, and I'm right there. It may sound a little naive, but it's better then sitting in the corner and sucking on my thumb, isn't it?

My next regional tournament is in Springhill, FL, which is another great looking bowling center.

- Joe Tex

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