A group of six bowlers from mainland China made history this week as the first players from their country ever to bowl in professional competition. The six players – ranging in ages from 30 to 54 – earned the right to enter the GEICO PBA World Series of Bowling VI by recording averages of 200-plus in a “PBA Pioneer League” program initiated by Frank Zhao, owner of Longmarch Bowling in Shanghai.
The Chinese aren’t competitive, yet, but their appearance at WSOB VI may be a preview of the significant impact China may have on the world of bowling in the years ahead. The term “pioneer” applied to the league program wasn’t accidental and the six bowlers who are part of it understand they may be part of a very big future for bowling in China. Elevating bowling’s popularity in Frank Zhao’s mission, and he has a potential market of 1.4 billion people in China to work with.
The state of bowling in China is closer to 1960s standards than today’s, Zhao said. The Chinese are decades behind in bowling technology, from lane beds to bowling balls and everything in between. But this group of six, he hopes, is the beginning of a trend to bring China into the modern bowling world. That’s why he brought PBA superstar Walter Ray Williams Jr. to China in 2012, and why he worked with PBA Commissioner Tom Clark to create the league program to qualify his “PBA pioneers.”
Only two of the Chinese players – 54-year-old Ding Tianbao and 52-year-old Qin Ziaogang– had ever been to the United States before (both entered the World Tenpin Bowling Association Senior Championships at Red Rock in Las Vegas in 2013). Lin Jianfeng, 49; Liu Shenyuan, 33; Li Weijun, 46, and Zhu Tao, 30, made their first trips to America. All six noted they are greatly impressed with the bowling technology they’ve witnessed, because back home, they are bowling on lanes conditioned with old wick/roller equipment with ancient bowling balls. They can’t compete, and they know it, but even worse, it’s hard to learn in the environment they currently have available.
Liu and Li are big Walter Ray fans. Lin and Qin admire Parker Bohn III. Zhu and Ding favor Norm Duke, while Ding quickly added Pete Weber to his list. Bowling alongside the greatest names in the sport has been a thrill, and it inspired Zhu to note, “We also need idols, heroes. We can buy machines. The problems we can sort out with money aren’t a problem, but we don’t have any heroes…like (former NBA star) Yao Ming. Everyone in China watched Yao.
“We don’t have heroes to encourage young people to start bowling. It’s a very attractive sport. It’s easy to play, but it’s very hard to get addicted. We need idols to make people fall in love with bowling and if we do that, it’ll be very popular in China.”
The six players, along with Zhao, are doing their best to create awareness. They are flooding Chinese bowling fans with Facebook posts and photos, and Twitter feeds, and more.
As enthusiasm builds, Zhao is the businessman who hopes to make that happen the rest of it happen.
“There is a lot of work to do,” he said, “but we have 1.4 billion people in China, and a growing middle class. The middle class will need many forms of sport and entertainment to have a better quality of life. Bowling is perfect for several reasons. Bowling is a combination of sport and leisure, but it’s a sport first and then you have a level to make it fun. But without sport, it won’t grow.”
That’s why the Chinese Pioneers came to Las Vegas. To learn the sport. And for the record, they never contended for a PBA title, but none of them finished last.
PBA.COM, XTRA FRAME VIEWERSHIP CONTINUES TO CLIMB
Heading into GEICO PBA World Series of Bowling VI, Xtra Frame’s subscription base continued to climb, breaking the 6,000 barrier in paid viewership for the first time…and nearly doubling the audience that watched WSOB II in 2010. A combination of XF Season Ticket (full year) holders and monthly subscribers hit 6,046 on Sunday, a 12.7 percent increase over the same day a year earlier.
Traffic on PBA.com, the PBA’s official website, also was significant. Through the first three days of World Series competition, more than 66,000 unique visitors had viewed just over 903,000 pages on PBA.com, primarily checking out the website’s live scoring feature. The cities with the highest visitor rate to PBA.com were, in order: Chicago, Houston, New York City, Boston and Los Angeles.
Over the past 12 months, PBA.com has recorded more than 2.5 million unique visitors and in excess of 20 million page views.
NEXT UP: PBA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH PLAY ROUND ROBIN
GEICO PBA WSOB VI competition continues Wednesday and Thursday with three eight-game round-robin match play rounds. Wednesday’s rounds begin at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. local time. Thursday’s final eight match games will begin at 2 p.m. The 24 match games, including bonus pins, will be combined with 28-game qualifying totals from the four animal pattern events to produce 52-game pinfall totals.
The top five players after 52 game will punch their tickets for return trips to the new South Point Bowling Plaza for the live ESPN finals of the World Championship on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 1 p.m. ET.
2015 PBA LEAGUE DRAFT SET FOR FRIDAY
The player draft for the 2015 PBA League will be webcast live on Xtra Frame Friday at 3 p.m. ET (noon PT) from South Point in Las Vegas. The eight PBA League managers will each select five players for the Elias Cup team competition that will be conducted over two days for delayed telecast on ESPN on Saturday and Sunday, March 28-29, at Bayside Bowl in Portland, Maine.
Team managers will be: Mark Baker (defending Elias Cup champion Silver Lake Atom Splitters), Carolyn Dorin-Ballard (GEICO New York City WTT KingPins), Johnny Petraglia (Brooklyn STyLES), Norm Duke (Dallas Strikers), Tim Mack (Pittsburgh Jack Rabbits), Jason Couch (Philadelphia Hitmen), Andrew Cain (L.A. X) and Del Ballard Jr. (Barbasol Motown Muscle).
For the draft, eligible players will be ranked based upon their position on a competition points list between World Series V and the Oklahoma Summer Swing held earlier in the year. The first player elected by each team must be taken from the group of players ranking 1-10 on the points list. The second player drafted will come from the group ranked 11-20 in points, plus any undrafted players from group one. The third player drafted will come from those ranked 21-30 in points. The fourth player will come from those ranked 31-40 in points, and the fifth player will come from the players ranked 41-50 and previous team members not among the points leaders. Players undrafted in each round will be eligible in the following round, expanding the pool of players as each round continues. The draft exception will be Dallas player-manager Norm Duke, who finished 39th on the points list and will draft himself in the fourth round.
13 WOMEN IN THE WORLD SERIES FIELD
WSOB VI includes a field of 13 women, including eight qualifiers from the new PBA Women’s Regional program and five who entered the event independently. The Women’s Regional qualifiers include Kristina Wendell (East Region); Christina Hardee (South); Liz Johnson (Central); Amanda Greene (Midwest); Clara Guerrero (Southwest), Missy Parkin (West), Lindsay Boomershine (Northwest) and Yuka Tsuchiya (Japan).
Women who entered independently are 2010 PBA Tournament of Champions winner Kelly Kulick, Union, N.J.; Yumi Oyobe, Japan; Natalia Rico, Colombia; Colombia’s Maria Rodriquez, Pflugerville, Texas; and Latvia’s Diana Zavjalova, Henderson, Nev.
It’s a pretty prominent group of women bowlers. Johnson qualified fourth for the Cheetah Championship presented by PBA Bowling Challenge Mobile Game TV finals, which will make her the first woman ever to appear in a PBA Tour nationally-televised event twice. Kulick and Guerrero (2013 Cheetah Championship) also have bowled in PBA Tour national telecasts. Those three along with Parkin and Tsuchiya own PBA Regional titles. Rodriguez and Zavjalova are 2014 and 2013 USBC Queens champions, respectively.
Also, Guerrero and Parkin finished one-two in the PBA Women’s Regional qualifying event and will face each other in the PBA Challenge finals on Sunday. The telecast will air on ESPN on Sunday, Jan. 18 at 3 p.m. ET. And Kulick, Johnson and Sweden’s Sandra Andersson, who didn’t compete in the World Series, will bowl for the World Bowling Tour Women’s Finals title on Sunday. The WBT Finals, presented by PBA, will air on ESPN on Sunday, Jan. 25 at 1 p.m. ET.
QUICK NOTES
● During Friday’s official practice session leading into the World Series, the PBA truck staff drilled just over 280 new bowling balls for the 240-player field. Through the first three days of “animal pattern” competition, that figure grew to 800 new balls drilled by the PBA staff.