I bowled in the UBA Classic Tournament this weekend.
{ 10-12-02 }

The UBA Classic has been running for about 25 years now, and it is a highly touted tournament, because of the very tough scoring condition. Any even scores (600 for 3 games) are almost always good enough to make the cut into the semi's.

I used my Columbia Ricochet, which is polished, and played around 9 at the arrows with good speed. This usually works for me in the first squad of the day, but did not today. In 3 games, I threw one double, and mixed and matched spares and strikes the rest of the way out. It was a very frustrating experience, because I was really looking forward to bowling today. If I tried to swing the ball just a hair, I would washout. If I tried to play around 10 or 11, the ball would take off to the left. It was just one of those days, I guess. The weird thing about this tournament was I made every spare, 100% accuracy. This is rare, because even spare shooting is a little harder on this condition, usually a double-pin spare is missed. But this was not the case. Making all those spares, I had 2 grind out 180's and a 179. It's kind of hard to really get anything going without some strikes, and when you throw a split, it makes everything much worse. I did not make the cut in either division, and am really disappointed that I couldn't make the cut, because I was really looking forward to it this weekend.

I don't know what I'm going to bowl next. I am sure a local tourney will pop-up. The next regional I plan on bowling is not until Thanksgiving weekend, so I have about 6 or 7 weeks to just bowl around here. In the meantime, I am going to drill up two new balls: A Columbia Arc, just to fill up my arsenal, and a Columbia Wicked, because I am interested in seeing how this ball will work for me.

- Joe Tex

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