...and this time it was against a top competitor that many in our organization consider to the best bowler in our group. This is the person that I took the belt away from 2 weeks prior to his rematch and I was happy that I soundly defeated him in our second meetup. He has held championship gold in our organization for more overall weeks than anyone else and even though the rules have changed a lot since then, he once held it for 5 months in a row. He's actually the reason why the rules were changed and I won't get into details about that but now champions have to face someone that is truly the top competitor each and every week. There are no easy, bye-weeks.
There's all of our awards, the overall championship belt is the black one and the others are for various other things the most exciting of which is the "turkey" that can change hands multiple times in the same day, which it did on the 30th of January.
So this week we had our group meeting at the same bowling alley that it is always at, but now it is taking place during Lunar New Year break or Tet as they call it here. Basically, everyone has off work and school and the locals flock to the shopping mall arcades and playgrounds to let the kids go absolutely mental and make enough noise to make you want to shove chopsticks in your ears.
The staff at the lanes are aware that we are coming because we always do at exactly the same time on Thursdays, but on public holidays we are subjected to holiday prices just like everyone else. Therefore, all of us had to "break the bank" and pay $8 for 3 games of bowling instead of $4,, haha.
We had a pretty great turnout and likely would have had more but I put the word out there to everyone that this is not the week to invite new people and there are others that occasionally come and play with us but are unreliable as far as attendance is concerned and I contacted most of those people and advised them to not come yesterday because the bowling alley will not hold all the lanes for us the way that they normally do. I was quite impressed that they only allowed people not in our group to bowl on the outside lanes and reserved the middles ones all for us.
Later, when someone else came along and they wanted to use a lane adjacent to our own I was even more impressed when the staff came and asked me if it would be alright if they let them play. I said it would be fine as long as they observe the courtesy rules and the staff explained what that means and they stuck to it. I don't know if this was because our new neighbors were Korean, a nationality that is just pleasant and polite by default, but they were delightful neighbors and we were actually a bit disappointed when they only played a single game and just left.
So let's get to the championship between me and my rival of sorts, who just so happens to be one of my best friends, the co-coordinator of the DUMBO league, and lives in the same building as I do.
I was a bit afraid because even though I have been pretty consistent here lately, I know that when I have a bad day or the lane conditions aren't the way I want / need them to be, I can be absolutely terrible. Basically, how I perform for the entire day will be determined halfway through the first game of 3.
Both myself and my opponent had a good first frame, with me cleaning up an easy spare and him getting a strike. And then both of us kind of went down not-so-great lane after that for the next 3 or 4 frames. Greatness begets greatness and it seems as though almost any time that one of us did well, the other did also. We also had moments where if one of us did badly, so did the other. None of this was done on purpose.
Near the end of the first game, I managed to get 3 strikes in a row and that puts a serious bump on your score as I am sure the bowlers out there are aware and I also got awarded the "gobbler", which is the plastic squeaking chicken toy that is pictured in the first picture. I love getting this award but it was only about 10 minutes later that someone else ended up taking it from me. There were 3 turkeys scored by our crew yesterday and this is good since the previous week we didn't have any.
Anyway, our first game scores were 151 for me, and 124 to my opponent. Neither of us are really satisfied with play of this sort and I think my opponent was sweating a bit at this point because it is never good to go down by 27 points because this means that he has to do really well in 1 or 2 frames and I also have to not do well.
Our second game stepped up a bit on both our parts with both of us closing out nearly every frame with him getting 2 strikes in a row in the 9th and 10th frames. It was a good thing for him that he did because I was very far ahead of him before he did that and our 2nd game scores were 176 for me and 158 to him. Now if you are good at math you now know that this puts me 45 points ahead of him and a comeback from that sort of deficit can only be accomplished if he does absolutely stellar in the 3rd game, and I completely lose my ability to hit the mark. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for him, I stayed on point for the most part even though my 3rd game was my worst of the day at 144. He managed to beat me in game three but it wasn't by nearly enough as his score was 146.
My overall victory margin over 3 games was 43 points and that is more than enough. I feel as though I have kind of cemented myself as a deserving champion by beating him in the rematch because that is something that is very difficult to pull off since he can absolutely explode on the pins on most weeks. For me, if I start out off my game there is a very good chance that I am going to remain that way, so I am happy that I managed to close out nearly all my spares on the day unless they were horrible splits that almost nobody, including professionals, can make.
151-176-144=471 to
124-158-146=428
We are pals so there was absolutely zero hard feelings here and we have faced one another for this championship more than anyone else has faced one another in this league. Our overall record in a head-to-head now stands at 7 victories to him and 5 to me. The last 4 times we have faced one another have all been victories to me so I think that he is starting to realize that his time of domination has come to a close.
Next week I am bowling against a person that I have never had to play against in any sort of competition but he is going to be a tough battle. Although he is inconsistent when he is hot, he's very hot. He got the highest score yesterday with a 195 and had he not flubbed it up in the 10th frame he would have surpassed 200 points which has only be accomplished a handful of times by anyone in our organization.
So now I have a bit of confidence in my abilities but not to the point of arrogance. I still feel like I could lose to almost anyone that is in the premiere league and with a win next week I will surpass the number of weeks that I have held onto the overall championship in the past 2 years. Let's see if I can keep it together.
In the unlikely event that you actually live in Da Nang or are visiting here on a Thursday sometime, feel free to come and join us at Lotte Mart Bowling Alley any Thursday. Registration takes place at 10:30 and the games start at 11AM!