NOTEBOOK \ Generations Bowling

Branding: The Generations Bowling Tour has only been around for about five weeks but they already have done a good job of coming up with getting their logo out to the public. The GBT already has shirts, hats, jackets, towels and even bowling ball bags with their logo on it. One of the more popular items this week has been an actual bowling pin which the fans buy and have been getting the pros to autograph.
In the family: Two of the hardest working members of the GBT tour have been the husband and wife team of Jim and C.J. Goodwin. Jim is the GBT press director and has been taking care of the media and bowlers all week, while C.J. has been in charge of the statistical aspect of the tournament.
Not the good old days: The only thing missing is the old scoreboards, which would show a game by game breakdown for all the players, with scores under 200 in red, and scores over 200 in black. Unlike golf, where the red is the good number, in bowling you want to see black numbers. The GBT has a computer program that shows the standings with total pins, the average, and the plus/minus. This is projected onto a screen that everyone can see in the bowling center.
Format: In the match play the 16 players will bowl one game against each other with the winner of the game getting 30 bonus pins. The 16th game will be a position round If the two tie each bowler receives 15 pins. Even though the two divisions will bowl against each other in the match play there will still be two separate divisions for the tournament with the top four players in each advancing to the step-ladder finals on Wednesday evening.
Perfect game: Mark Roth had the first perfect game in the tournament on Lanes 3 and 4 in his fourth game of the day. He followed that with a 232 and a 278 for 810 for his middle three games. Earlier, Gary Dickinson (in game two) started off with a six count, made the spare, then tossed the next 11 strikes in a row for a 290.
Paul Trgovac