This is going to end up being a two- parter because I have a lot to say about this epic day.
I am not trying to get arrogant or anything because that is a sure-fire way of jinxing myself but I went into the first title defense against an opponent that I had a record of 1 win and 5 losses against and I wasn't feeling that my chances were very good. We didn't take a survey or anything but I would be willing to bet that if you were to ask anyone that was there that day before it began to bet on who they thought would win, I imagine that 90% of them would have guessed that my opponent would be the winner. I would have been one of the people that bet on him and there are many reasons why this is the case.
For starters, he has held the championship in the past for 22 weeks straight. No one else has even come close to that. Long ago when I was somewhat dominant in the early days of Dumbo, I held the championship for 6 weeks, another guy, the Russian that I recently dethroned, he held it for 8 weeks. Most of the other champions have had it for 4 or less and many of them only had it for one.
Also, he consistently bowls very well. We stopped tracking the averages a long time ago when our stats guy unfortunately died, but I would imagine that his overall average is over 150. It is very rare for him to have a game that is lower than 130 or 140 whereas for most of the other people in the league it is quite rare that they get more than that many points.
He also has the highest score that has ever been scored in DUMBO at 234 points.
So yeah, there are a lot of reasons to be afraid of this guy. I was afraid and I went into the game with a pessimistic point of view. I expected to lose but was just hopeful that I could keep the point difference at less than 100 points. I was laid back though because the guy I was bowling against has become one of my best friends in the world over the past 4 years.
I started out with a tinge of fear of embarrassing myself and as champ I get to choose the lane and who goes first. I like lanes where the ball return machine is on my right hand side so any odd-numbered lane will do. I am also a nice guy so I let my opponent go first. He jacked it right in the pocked but only 9 fell. He is an extremely accurate bowler but he also only bowls straight so this puts him at a disadvantage as far as strikes are concerned. I was worried when it was my turn to go but I stood up, nailed the pocket and got a strike on the first ball of the day, not a terrible way to start.
We both carried on like we belonged in the championship lane for the remainder of the first entire game.
We were both doing so well that it was absolutely essential that we close out every frame because if not the other guy is going to run away with the score. I think it was the 8th frame before I didn't close a frame (mine is the score on the bottom) but you can see that my opponent missed two frames and it was at this point that he was starting to get a bit worried.
Of all those frames up there that I got strikes and spares I am actually the most happy about the frame 5 spare and let me explain why. The reason why the 6 has a red circle around it is because that indicates that you left yourself with a split after the first ball. A "split" for those of you that don't know, is any remaining pins that are not adjacent to other pins. These are considerably more difficult to complete than pins that are next to one another and even the professionals struggle to get these.
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This, ladies and gents is a 3 6 7 10 split and while this is possible by two different strike points, you have to hit it just right in order for it to work. You have to clip the 3 pin (the one closest to you) so that it flies all the way across the lane but hits far enough to the right so that it is also going to knock down the 6 and 10 pins. There is NO room for error here and I knew this. I snipered TF out of this and this is the ball I am most proud of for the entire day. I'm not trying to be a bowling snob, but strikes are common to the point where they aren't really worth celebrating. Picking up splits is much more difficult.
To this day, in the league, I have a $100 reward for anyone that ever picks up a 7/10 split. It has not been claimed despite thousands of games played
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This shot is so impossible that it has only been picked up a handful of times in televised competitions and there is a precision machine in a laboratory somewhere that can bowl with absolute accuracy every single time and even that machine only picks up this split around 25% of the time. I think that I am going to end up keeping my $100.
That split that I picked up wowed the crowd because it looked like my streak was over at that point but I pulled through. I turned around amazed as well and my opponent cheered me on but I am sure he was a bit disappointed that I got it because it looked like he was finally going to get a break on my streak. Since I had no open frames and he already had 2, I think he was getting a bit worried.
He is one of my best friends on and off the lanes, so our competitive nature is always light-hearted. We frequently will comment on how both of us were hitting the "pocket" regularly but the pins just wouldn't all fall down. He normally is a better 2nd ball guy than I am, but today, I was an absolute spare-picking-up machine.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that a lot of this game is mental and if you start to slip or your strategy stops working and you let that get into your head, then things can go downhill fast. Just a few frames of good performance by one player in a row along with 2 frames of good performance by the other person can completely change the outcome and that is why despite the fact that I only left a single frame open in the entire first game that my lead was eliminated in the 9th and 10th frame when my opponent went on to be a super duper late bloomer and bowled a turkey (3 strikes in a row). A turkey adds a tremendous amount of points to one's score and this eliminated the lead I had spent the entire previous 8 frames building up. This just goes to show that the most important frame in bowling..... is the current one.
This resulted in the final score for game one being
173 (me) to 180 (not me)
I wasn't going to allow this to get me down and believe it or not, I was actually genuinely happy to see my friend pull it back. It is much more fun to have a game that is closely competitive and I'm not a spoil sport, so for him to be just 7 points ahead of me didn't bother me at all.
I'll talk about the 2nd and 3rd game in the next installment but here is a pic of Nadi, as is tradition.
She doesn't know it yet, but I am about to take her on a poopy-walk, which is her favorite thing other than yum yums.