I want to start of by saying congrats to Brady McDonough for his first PBA title. Also, thank you to Copperfield Bowl for hosting another amazing tournament (minus the starting late 🤣)!
This was the best finish I have had in any PBA event. The qualifying block started out rough with digging a small hole in the first 3 games due to a whiffed 10 pin in the 10th frame of the second game and a terrible pair for the 3rd game, I found myself -79 and in a pretty bad mental space. I managed to move to the next pair and had a clean 224 for game 4. On the fill shot of game 4 I switched to my pin down Phaze II and struck. With the better look I went into game 5 with peace of mind and comfort that i was throwing a reliable ball and had good motion. With the Phaze II, I was able to start with the front 6 then a 4 pin spare and a 10 pin spare with 4 more strikes afterwards to shot 268. It took everything my wife had to bring me out of it to fight back +27 after game 6. Then I hit another rough pair with 3 splits in the game and only 1 double in the 10th frame to get to 168. With that, my +27 buffer was completely diminished. I managed to get some very lucky strikes in the the final game thanks to throwing a Hustle USA right around the head pin and pulled out the final 202 to end the first day at -3. The 20 minutes of waiting to hear if I made the cut was agonizing as I knew I was on the bubble at -5 the game before. The cut for the first day ended at -8. So with the -3 I ended the qualifying block in 31st place.
After making it the cut in 31st place, majority of the pressure was removed from my shoulders. Short of having a miracle 5 game run, there was very little I was going to be able to do to make it to the top 8 for the next cut. Though that did not stop me from giving it my all during those 5 games. I started with a rather mediocre first 3 games, 197, 172, and 201, putting me at -33, but surprising not in last for the day so far. At this point I was given some advice by Donna and Carol "Move further left, you're not far enough left". With this advice I made another 5 board move with my feet, after just making a 5 board move in the middle of the 3rd game, and started throwing my Storm DNA again (this was the ball of the tournament for me). I found a grove and threw 2 4 baggers in game 4 to shoot 244 and get to +11. At this point I had moved up in the standings to 23rd place with 1 game to go. This last game was rather lack luster in regards to spares (missed 1 split and 2 makeable multipin spares) and shot 199 to finish at +10 for the 13 games.
While I knew I wasn't going to make the top 8, I still had more waiting to do to see where I finished for the tournament. I figured that with shooting 199 for the last game that I would have gone down a few places as the scoring pace around me was around the 220's for the final game. After about 10 minutes of waiting and taking my equipment out to the car, it was announced that I had in fact moved up in the standings on that last game to 19th. I had an amazing time at this event and I look forward to bowling it again and again until I possibly win it one day.
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