Pro Series Event #1 – Ultimate Ladder
August 26th, 2012 – Viking Recreation – East Bridgewater, Ma.
As I said earlier, I apologize for the lateness of this post, as well as the lateness of the creation of this site. Moving forward I hope this site can be the heartbeat of the candlepin bowling world in New England and maybe for our friends up in eastern Canada. The first Pro Series event stopped over in East Bridgewater, Massachuetts for the Ultimate Ladder event to open the season.
What is the Ultimate Ladder you ask? This tournament is a fan favorite. Bowlers bowl three strings to determine seeding for the knock out rounds. The top twenty five bowlers make the cut in this fast paced tournament. At this point there is a random draw for each ladder – five ladders with five bowlers each. Bowlers finishing one through five in the qualifier are determined to be one seeds, the bowlers that qualified six through ten are determined to be two seeds, etc. A random draw starts as the a five seed is pulled, he pulls a four seed, and so on. After that, another five seed is pulled until there are five ladders. After the selection process, the five seed faces the four seed. The winner of that faces the three seed, and so on. Once each ladder has a winner – a new ladder is created – the ultimate ladder! Those seeds are created based on total pinfall in the final match of each of the original five ladders. The same format is used until a champion is crowned.
Let me start off by saying that the bowling community is amazing and is only getting better. The Pro Series is making candlepin bowling more relevant that it has in the past ten years, and the Candlepins for Kids is doing a great job getting those young bowlers ready for the big stage. Covering these events is not easy. For the most part we are all mostly friends here. Bowling in the event can make it even more difficult since I can’t tell you how someone did two lanes over from me since I was busy for part of the tournament. In the future there will be a better write up, more pictures – since I didn’t get any at all. I will admit the day of the event this blog itself was up in the air, and might not have happened at all. It’s here now, it’s going to grow, and it’s here to stay. I managed to cover two complete matches – the final of the fifth ladder – (1) Dave Barber vs. (3) Jeff Surette and I was able to watch the first round of the ultimate ladder (4) Jim Ayotte vs. (5) Chris Sacchetti. Being the community that it is, I started moving around and I wasn’t able to comment on every match.
I had a great day albeit my score didn’t reflect it. I was really happy with how I bowled, and I bowled with two great competitors – Steve Renaud Jr and Mark Ricci. You’d think with how the first half of Steve’s strings went, he would have softened the pins up for me, but to no avail. I absolutely crushed the headpin, and on this day I was a split machine. I could only smile and laugh as I hit the head pin over and over and had nothing to show for it. Mark summed up the alley uniquely – he said “This house is awesome – except that for one in five bowlers it will do absolutely nothing no matter how you throw the ball.” Things didn’t go my way, but I had a great time bowling with these two competitors and watching the ultimate ladder when I could.
The way the alley was, it turned out that the fifth ladder was on the other side of the support poles so it was kind of set off on it’s own. It turns out I was Dave Barber and Jeff Surette’s lone fan until their wives came over to watch them. Dave chose to bowl second being the higher seed. Right out of the gate in the second box on lane 9 Jeff converted the 3-6-10 for a spare, sitting at 19. Dave responded by picking up the left side diamond on lane 10 and after a six fill jumped out to an early lead with Surette still sitting on his spare. Jeff loaded up his spare with 7 and converted a pair of tens to finish up with 46 after four boxes. This is where the match started to change however. Barber managed to pick up not one but two ridiculous spares during his trip. He managed to convert the 7-8 with a piece of wood angled away from the two pins, and followed that by converting the 3-6-7-9-10! After four boxes Barber led 51-46 and still had his fill in the fourth.
Jeff converted another great spare, nailing the 3-7-10 and added another 7 fill and finished with a 10 box – 73 total. Dave then started building moment by throwing a strike on lane 10 to widen his lead. He filled with 9 more and finished with a ten box to be leading 90-73 after six. In the end things worked out great for Barber as he converted two spares in the ninth and tenth against Surette’s in the ninth, to pull a hard fought 143-117 win in the fifth ladder. The 143 string was also the highest qualifying score placing Dave as the one seed in the Ultimate ladder.
After the finals of the individual ladders were over I was able to watch the first round of the ultimate ladder match between Jim Ayotte and Chris Sacchetti. Yet another Pro Series match that went down until the end. Luckily for Chris it came down to his ability to covert at least one mark every trip up to the lanes. He has spares in the first, seventh, and tenth, and he had strikes in the third, fifth, and eighth.
As aside to this, this was Jim’s eighth string to Chris’s fifth. Jim was the fifth seed in his ladder, and won all four of his matches to get into the finals. Fatigue may have been setting in. Chris jumped out quickly after four with a spare in the first, and his strike in the third. Jim hung tough with a spare in the fourth, but before his fill he was trailing Chris by 16 54-38 though he still had a fill in the fourth.
Jim loaded up his spare in the fourth with 7 and then converted another spare in the sixth and sat down with 64. Chris dropped another explosion on the lane filled with 9, and finished with a 10. After the fifth and sixth Chris increased his lead to 19 (83-64) though Jim was in great shape with a fill ball waiting.
Ayotte still had something left in the tank as he had an eight fill and skillfully picked up the 3-10 for another spare! He was cutting into deficit with vengeance. He followed suit by picking up 7 more via fill and had another spare in the eighth! Sacchetti not to be outdone matched Ayotte by going two for two in the seventh and eighth! Chris threw a spare in the seventh and followed with a crusher of a hammer and sat down with a lead 113-99 with two bonus balls compared to Ayotte’s lone one.
Chris made it quick and painless as he filled his strike with 7, and closed out the tenth box with his sixth mark – a spare. After the bonus, Chris Sacchetti stood tall over Jimbo Ayotte 146-116 and advanced to the next round.
For a complete run down of the qualifying results and the ladders, please head to Pro Series website.