There were dramatic scenes in Monday morning’s United States Bowling Congress Masters event in Las Vegas, won in awe-inspiring fashion by the Australian, Jason Belmonte. There were even more dramatic scenes in my living room, where tenpin bowling revealed itself as a telegenic contest brimming with sibling rivalry, psychological drama and sensible slacks.
Then there was the bowling itself. If ESPN’s commentators would rather be calling the Super Bowl or the NBA finals, they don’t let on. “Are you jacked up?” screamed peroxide blonde anchor Dave Lamont at the start of proceedings, and the polite nod of his bowling hall of fame offsider Randy Pedersen mirrored my own.
Later, in the opening stages of the final shoot-out, special comments man Pedersen explained that, “this is the kind of match where a single pin can hang you”, which seemed a bit dramatic. But blow me down if the player he was describing – Californian college prodigy Michael Tang – didn’t immediately buckle under the pressure and produce a spare, consigning himself to the gallows.
Most Australians wouldn’t recognise him if his face had been tattooed on the backs of both hands, but with this triumph Belmonte clinched an unprecedented fourth Masters crown in five years, not to mention his eighth major title overall. Three more of those and this unsung hero will rank as bowling’s greatest of all time, and a singular sporting force to rival Don Bradman, Margaret Court and Phar Lap. In Robert Ludlum parlance, we’re now in the midst of The Belmonte Supremacy.
Tenpin bowling people probably wouldn’t put it in such overblown terms, though the highly unconventional Belmonte might. He is such a maverick talent he bowls with two hands guiding the ball, much as a child might. Indeed he learned his idiosyncratic technique as a toddler tearing around the bowling alley owned by his father in the country town of Orange. At the rate Belmonte wins tournaments, it’s a wonder that more pros don’t try it.
Most but not all other bowlers (fans of Finland’s Osku Palermaa and Swede Jesper Svensson are now sagely nodding) use one hand, at least at the sport’s very top level on the PBA Tour, which is not intimidatingly removed from the highest-scoring lane of your own local alley. Still, any local wannabe who could beat Jason Belmonte would be doing alarmingly well.
In Australia, tenpin bowling remains a quite obscure concern, hidden away on pay-TV. Its most notable flirtation with mainstream exposure – outside of its cult status in the fictional worlds of Kingpin and The Big Lebowski – occurred in the late 80s, but its hallowed position as the innings break palate cleanser during Nine’s international cricket coverage was eventually surrendered to the 18-foot skiffs, then The Cricket Show. Dedicated sporting obscurists of a certain age will regale you with stories of Cara Honeychurch’s 1998 Commonwealth games spree. If they can name a single prominent player since they’re lying.
It’s a pity. As a TV spectacle tenpin bowling has much to recommend it, and for terminology alone it’s a winner. Bowlers can be “power strokers” and “crankers”. Calling a spade a spade, the experts term Belmonte’s delivery a “two-handed shovel”. If he is not inspiring legions of young impersonators it would be a missed opportunity for the sport.
Those the Australian leapfrogged for this title ranged from the intense Utah native Alex Hoskins, who was a little too clenched on his television debut, and Sweden’s fifth seed Martin Larsen, who was perhaps distracted by the presence of what appeared to be his entire extended family. Bottle blonde to a man and woman, they rather stood out among three rows of 40-something blokes with the almost identical combination of spiked hair, goatee beards and slightly unfashionable glasses. To rise up the Scandinavian fame ladder now, Larsen might need a bit-part in The Bridge.
As per Australian law, Belmonte’s nickname on the tour is “Belmo”. As per ESPN’s considerable investment in the sport, this week he took home a winner’s cheque of US$30,000, which is a lot of credits on the air hockey table. It is also why – as per the darts success of Simon ‘The Wizard’ Whitlock in the UK – he plies his trade in the US rather than slugging it away on the lacklustre Australian circuit, where rewards are more modest. You can’t eat tenpin bowling trophies.
The denouement here was compelling. Belmonte sealed it with seven consecutive strikes to blow past his flailing opponent in a 279-212 landslide. Tang did have his moments though. To get to the final he beat his higher-ranked older brother Darren in an act of fratricide to match Claudius’s perfect game against Hamlet. Mr and Mrs Tang, who wore “Team Tang” T-shirts, otherwise displayed no outward emotion. This is a sport which rewards level-headedness. Belmonte didn’t allow himself fripperies like fist-pumps until the penultimate frame.
Through it all, the closest the Australian came to bowling mortality was a spare on the eighth frame, and such is the standard to which he is held that Pedersen bluntly labelled one of the 33-year-old’s less polished efforts “filthy”. It was a strike, for the record.
“He just got the full wrath of Jason Belmonte,” concluded Lamont, excitable to the end. “He doesn’t fly half the way around the world to finish second.” But bowling was the winner. A note to Channel Nine: get it back on free-to-air TV while Australia’s still got a world-beater.
Elsewhere, there will be much excitement about tonight’s NRL season opener between the Sharks and Broncos (Fox League, 8pm), because it’ll be the first league action of 2017 not occurring outside a courthouse. You’d assume differently if you’d looked up at the TV screen of any Sydney pub in the last decade, but until Monday night the NRL did not have a dedicated Fox Sports channel to call home.
That has now changed, with the new Fox League channel launching in the 502 slot previously occupied by Fox Sports 2, which moves to 503 and will presumably be called something else now, and likewise Fox Sports 3 to 505 (504 is occupied by Fox Footy). Fear not: the seemingly endless omnibus of Storage Wars repeats on A&E remains unmolested.
Fox League will also feature a new show called “Queenslanders Only” (Wednesdays, 8pm), which openly bills itself as “parochial” and features veteran journalist Robert Craddock interviewing the likes of Mal Meninga, Kevin Walters and Justin Hodges. I’m smashing an empty can of XXXX over my forehead just thinking about it.
In Saturday’s cricket, Australia will be attempting to repeat their stupendous first Test victory against India with another in Bangalore (Fox Sports 1, 3pm). Commentating throughout will be Shane Warne, who last week claimed the nightmarish Pune pitch contained craters the size of Mars.
A year on from earnestly suggesting humans had descended from extraterrestrials, the former leg-spinner’s theories on interplanetary life are starting to rival those of the late jazz bandleader Sun Ra, who believed he’d been sent from Saturn to spread peace on earth. Our Shane would probably settle for a jar of Vegemite and some Tip Top high fibre.
