by Randy Ooney      past articles

The Masters

         Baseball has its World Series, and Football has the Super Bowl.  Only two major sports have a major tournament entitled “The Masters”, Bowling and Golf.  The USBC Masters tourament was held recently in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where a field of over 480 of the best bowlers in the world competed for a total purse of $350,000.  To put that in perspective, that’s about the same amount of money you would get if you finished fourth in the Masters at Augusta.  It’s the amount of money AROD earns playing 20 innings, and the amount David Beckham earns for not playing at all.  In fact, if you laid that amount of money end to end from Milwaukee to Green Bay, it would all blow into Lake Michigan. 

         If they really wanted to stir up interest, the USBC should publish a bracket on the internet and every newspaper in the country.  Televise all the games after the cut to 64.  Think up clever names like Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight for the quarter final rounds, and hire Dick Vitale for the telecasts.

        Minnesota was well represented at the contest, with 17 bowlers from the Land of 10,000 lakes  Adam Apo and Chad Nelson made the round of 64, but on the final Sunday, the Final Four (There I go with another cute name), were Walter Williams, Steve Jaros, Patrick Allen, and Sean Rash.  I settled into my TV watching chair with remote in hand so I could check in on the Viking game now and then.  It is absolutely amazing how ESPN and FOX can coordinate their events so well so that each event has commercials on at the same time.  So I stuck with Miller Park.  They had a decent turnout of spectators, (The Packers had the Monday game that week), and the cameras would frequently pan the fan in the stands.  There were a number of signs touting ESPN or Cheeseheads, or a favorite bowler, but I really did a doubletake when I saw a fan holding up a “Circle Me Bert” sign.  That was kind of the highlight of the show for me.

         And speaking of Bert, evidently Dave Ryan has left the PBA telecast crew and has been replaced by Rob Stone.  Help.  I grew up with Whispering Joe Smith.  Along came ABC with Chris Schenkel and Billy Welu, followed by Bo Burton, Mike Durbin, and a host of others.  Bowling has got to be difficult to broadcast.  There’s not a lot of action to call, and there’s not too much to analyze, but they all did a decent job.  Rob Stone really needs to call a few curling matches or a bridge tournament or anything other than the PBA.  Please.  I’ll be using the Mute button on my remote and listening to the Vikings lose on the radio.