A Grand Moment in a Year to Remember

Bowling Digest, Dec, 2000 by David Ozio, Dick Denny

In a back-and-forth battle with Pete Weber for the 1991 PBA Player of the Year award, one match may have made all the difference

MIKE AULBY AND I still hold the PBA record for the highest-scoring single match on national television. Together we had a 579 total in the finals of the Wichita (Kan.) Open in 1993, and to shoot 279 and lose, especially to Aulby's 300, was truly memorable.

There was a nationally televised match, however, that I didn't lose to a perfect game, which is even more memorable than my showdown with Aulby. It came in the finals of the 1991 Tournament of Champions, at Riviera Lanes in Akron, where I defeated top-seeded Amleto Monacelli 236-203.

That victory, the ninth of my career and third of '91, helped get me over the hump in the race for PBA Player of the Year. I won a fourth title at Rochester, N.Y., that fall, which enabled me to clinch the award and helped me finish the year as the tour's leading money winner.

I thank God I was given a chance to have that kind of year and that I was able to make the most of it. It's something all of us on tour strive for, but few achieve.

Going into the 1991 season, I hadn't done anything particularly different to prepare for what turned out to be a special year--a year that helped me get elected to the PBA Hall of Fame in 1995. I always was a good bowler, but a huge window of opportunity opened in '91 and I jumped through it.

In order to win on the PBA Tour, players have to get that window. Everybody is different, but you can't have the kind of year I had without a number of things going just right. Each tournament I won--including the first two of the season, the AC-Delco Classic at Torrance, Calif., and the Showboat Invitational at Las Vegas--was from outside the second arrow. That's my strength.

I was at the peak of my career at the time, and everything jelled for me. Had we bowled that year on 50 feet of oil (as prescribed by the PBA lane-conditioning personnel), I'd have had no chance to do what I did. The lanes hooked all year. They were running in the 30-foot oil range (again prescribed by the PBA). I did win at Rochester, where the lanes had a lot of oil, but I was way outside with my shot.

When I got to Akron in April for the Tournament of Champions, Pete Weber and I were in a close race for Player of the Year. He'd won back-to-back tournaments during the winter tour--the Fair Lanes Open at Randallstown, Md., and the Johnny Petraglia Open at North Brunswick, N.J.--and then clinched the U.S. Open in Indianapolis two weeks before the Tournament of Champions.

Even though Weber was bowling really well, my comfort level was exceptionally high going into Akron. Scores generally were never very high at Riviera Lanes, and the conditions there fit my game, too. I had good ball reaction in practice.

I began qualifying with a 174 game, and I remember it well--I was aggravated with myself. But I did wind up 144 over (par of 200) for the block and was fifth with a 218 average. I didn't make a physical adjustment after the 174 start. It was more mental.

Not long before the Tournament of Champions, I remembered what Tom Kite said after winning a golf tournament: "The main reason I won was because I was patient." A key for me that whole week was staying patient. That's not to say it works every time. But nobody ever won a tournament by being totally negative. I stayed upbeat throughout qualifying, match play, and the TV finals.

There were two or three times my patient approach was put to the test. Once, I had four games of 190, 184, 224, and 174 in a row, but I finished the block with 223, 267, and 201. Over the last eight games of match play, I shot 184, 225, 198, and 197, losing them all. Then I turned in games of 239, 199, 226, and 269 and won three of those four to qualify second for the TV playoff.

As I said before, a key to my success that week was that scores weren't too high. I didn't have a good won-lost record in match play (13-11-0), so that told me I had to put up a strong average. Monacelli had the same won-lost record as I did, but he averaged 220.1, which was high for the tournament. I had the second-highest average, with 219.4.

Chris Warren, Scott Devers, and Mike Miller rounded out the field for the finals. Warren (10-14-0) averaged 217.2 to qualify fifth, Devers (16-8-0) 215.0 to make fourth, and Miller (18-6-0) 214.7 to earn the third spot.

Finals day, April 27, was kind of a strange one. A bomb threat delayed the start of the TV show 40 minutes. It's easy enough to say, but you just can't let something like that bother you. In fact, we were all pretty relaxed, and we even talked half-jokingly about setting up pins in the parking lot to decide the championship.

When we finally got to practice, I noticed I had a decent hook on the lanes. I was extremely comfortable, and there was no reason to do anything other than just go out and enjoy myself. Warren beat Devers 248-224 in the first match of the finals. Miller then defeated Warren 230-218. I don't remember very well my match with Miller, which I won 240-227. He did have a miscue late in the game, and when you're bowling the best in the world on TV, no miscues are allowed.