In our league of bowlers here in Da Nang we have a lot of awards and because we are all silly adults we even have championship belts that are simply WWE replica belts. One for the women and one for the men.
The person who is going to face the champion each week is determined by taking the 4 highest single-game scores of the day and then putting those names into a randomizer app to select one of them to face the current champ. By luck and a little bit of ability, the person who was going to face our current champion this week, was me.
I prepped for this by bowling 6 games the day prior and really felt as though I had finally gotten a handle on my game and maybe had a chance of actually winning.
Here is my first game and when I tell you that this is well above what I would normally bowl I am telling the truth. It is lucky that I took the photo when I did because I totally flubbed the 8th-10th frames leaving them open and finishing with a still impressive 167.
Unfortunately, my opponent bowled a 145 and the winner is determined by the total score of 3 games. Something happened to me after I took that photo and I suppose I am a little superstitious because I basically failed to do anything impressive from that point forward. I bowled a paltry 113 in the second game and my opponent closed the gap of 22-point lead I had established in game 1. By the time we got to game 3 he was 20 points ahead of me.
I still had some faith that I would be able to pull it back if I could return to form but again, this never happened as I failed to pick up strikes and spares time and time again. Also, my opponent really found his game and twice during game 3 he bowled a "turkey" which is 3 strikes in a row. By the time we got to frame 6 it was a mathematical certainty that I was going to lose and he ended up with a day-high of 202 in that game. My final game was better than my 2nd but still a mere 143.
Before Covid shut this entire city down for months, I was a much better bowler than I am now and it had the opposite effect on our current champion who has now defended his belt for 19 weeks which is by far the longest anyone has held the championship in our league.
I had hoped to be able to bring back the championship gold to the house to force my dog to pose with it, but alas, it was not meant to be.
Practice makes perfect as they say and I think that I am going to have to do a lot more of that if I am ever going to have this award displayed in my house anytime soon.