Bowling and Golf Geek Stuff

It's U.S. Open week on the Professional Bowlers Tour. As much as I enjoy and prefer golf as a pasttime, bowling has a special place in my heart, and if I'm honest, is really my better game.

Some 20 years ago I made a statement to a friend, and fellow bowler and golfer, that I was better at golf than bowling. He didn't buy it, saying he saw me do both, and wasn't impressed by the golfer in me.

He was right; it was more wishful thinking on my part. When I graduated high school, I barely lettered in golf, but I was the school's top bowler. Furthermore, I didn't really narrow the gap between the two avocations until recent years.

One way to compare the two today could be to see if I have what it takes to play in each game's top open tournament. If I wanted to play in the U.S. Open golf tournament, I would need a USGA handicap index of no higher than 1.4, and that would merely be to qualify to play in the first of two qualifying stages. My current index is 4.3, and has never been better than 3.8

To compete in the US Open in bowling, I need to have averaged 190 in league play in any one of the past five seasons, for a minimum of 21 games. After taking several years off from league bowling, I joined part-time this year, and am averaging 207.9 for 30 games.

That would seem to indicate that I didn't narrow the gap at all, and that the gap perhaps has even grown wider.

It doesn't tell the whole story, however. For one thing, supply and demand makes the standards of qualifying much lower for bowling. There are only 412 bowlers competing in the US Open this week, while thousands enter the USGA Open every year.

Secondly, and I'll build this point with an example, my best ever round of golf in relation to par, a 70 on the par 71 Carroll (Iowa) Municipal Golf Course several years ago, was actually almost four strokes "worse" than the 74 I shot from the tips at Emerald Greens' Platinum and Silver nines last year. This is because the United States Golf Association "rates" and "slopes" courses to account for degree of difficulty, and the USGA Handicap Index is calculated with those factors built in to the formula.

Bowling has no such rating of bowling centers. Thus, the 180 average I maintained at the Alley Cat lanes in Ortonville, MN several years ago, goes simply as a 180 average. Compare this to my 195 average at Minnehaha Lanes the year before, and one would think I suddenly got worse. In actuality, the two averages were comparable, because of how much more difficult the Alley Cat was to score at. But there is no "rating" or "slope" for bowling, and in lieu of this, the PBA/BPAA keeps a lower requirement for the bowlers who have little choice but to bowl at a difficult house in rural areas (plus, I should mention, those who choose to bowl on intentionally more difficult "sport" conditions available in some leagues).

One thing the two sports' national opens do have in common: Anyone who barely meets the minimum qualifications to fork over the entry fee and take a chance has virtually zero chance of even coming close to make the next stage in golf or make the cut-line in bowling.

Still, one of my lifetime ambitions is to enter both tournaments, just for the experience. If that's going to happen, I'll need to sharpen up the golf game before Old Man Time catches up with me.