Magic City Memoir

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Observations and Irritations
August 2005 (2)

Time to Stop Complaining and Do Something About It

Greetings from Birmingham. Today starts the Big Stepladder, worth $2,000 to be held this weekend August 5-7 at Brunswick Riverview Lanes. It surely promises to be a tournament to remember. As I mentioned in the last article there were two other tournaments that have led up to this weekend.

In the world of political correctness, of which I am not a supporter of, some people would call bowling a lower average than one’s capability, “Fair Competition Challenged.” We call them sandbaggers or cheaters. I have a new name however; “shot victim”. It is a well known fact that in this state there are several centers that are impossible to shoot a high average on: Gadsden, Talladega and Holiday for example. Some of these bowlers I would call my friends and I would not call them sandbaggers, I would call them shot victims. I have no problem with anyone who bowls on an incredibly hard condition and does the best they can. BUT Oh there’s that ugly word. I have a problem where you are allowed to be a significant advantage over everyone else because you are a shot victim. I have preached and complained about sandbagging. Well now I have an answer: Communication.

It is the tournament director’s responsibility to know who is bowling in his/her tournament. They should be notified of how much money an individual has won over the past 12 months should be on the front of your entry. If a bowler fails to notify you of more than X amount of dollars before they bowl and you find out, then they should be given the option being a re-rated. If a person bowls off an average without reporting money won they should automatically be disqualified and forfeit their entry. I said the answer is communication. The only way to know is for the tournament managers to get together, and compile a list of money winners from their tournament, and track the persons play. Just like in a casino you track your players but keeping up with their scores and money winnings. Vladamir Harvey, Jason McCarty, Ron Ware, All TNBA Tournaments and Stan Botoroff, etc. should be able to communicate with each other via fax or through the Internet and track 2 very important things. The first is obviously money won, the second and what I believe to be the most important; tournament average. If we start this tournament and we track the play of the bowlers, and hold them accountable to providing details of how much money they won, it will be easy to see who is cheating and who is a shot victim. It will also be easier to track the tournament average.

If you are a shot victim you should not be rewarded for that. I understand you live too many miles to go bowl at a different center, and I am sorry. You have to take responsibility to know that you are more likely than not going to be re-rated. Take it like a man or woman as the case may be. It’s not singling you out and it’s not personal. We have corrupted our sport by allowing sandbagging to drive away the true handicap bowlers because they have no chance to win. The shot victims should have a tournament average, and in my opinion and only my PERSONAL OPINION, their average will more than likely go up approximately 10-20 pins. That means if you average 167 in on an impossible shot you probably average 177-190 on a good shot. Take the re-rate and alert the tournament director when you see someone who has an abnormal amount of handicap. This is should be across the board for everyone. And no, don’t think you are going to adjust down. I can see someone go out and bowl 3 tournament and average 150 and come back and say “I should be re-rated based on my tournament average”. It does not work like that. It is not to be abused or manipulated. I also think there needs to be a cutoff of when the re-rate stops. In other words, if you walk into a tournament with a 165 average and shoot 700, 700, 700 you should not be re-rated to 233. You should be capped at 30 pin re-rate or 200 whichever is less. Why 30 pins you may ask? Because most cuts are around 65-100 pins over and 30 pins would just about automatically put you in the semi-finals or guarantee you to cash.

I have complained and preached about the problem and now I am offering a solution. In fact I will go one further, I will compile and maintain the list if you will put it into excel format and email to me @ neustar@charter.net.

Until Next Time…Lets do what it takes to bring the bowlers back and save our sport.

Don is a Birmingham bowler. If you have any story suggestions, please submit to Don at dchammer@charter.net

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