The trade off, says Baker, is that it’s harder to generate velocity with the two-hander, to remain balanced and accurate in your delivery. Belmonte’s rev rate, which topped 600 per minute when he first joined the tour (most players averaged somewhere around 350-400 at the time), was otherworldly. And when coupled with the right velocity, those revs translate into power down lane, sending pins flying: messengers, as they’re called, when one of them rolls or bounces and takes out a still-standing pin to complete a strike or spare. Because two-handers don’t use their thumbs, it’s easier to impart spin, or revolutions, says Mark Baker, a renowned coach. Nothing in the rule book makes the two-hander illegal, but the delivery does confer at least one advantage. I told him, ‘I can get you a commissioner’s exemption.’ He went, ‘I need two.’ There are people who still haven’t forgiven me for that.” “He had the best story, the best media potential, because of the way he bowled,” Clark recalls. By giving Belmonte a one-time tournament exemption, Clark figured the young star would be drawn to the challenge of the PBA, like a gambler drawn to Vegas. Clark wanted to deepen the talent pool by bringing the best international talent stateside Belmonte was his prized recruit. In 2008, when Clark joined the PBA as its deputy commissioner, the tour was largely an American affair that required bowlers to earn the exempt status that would guarantee them entry into tournaments. Mack helped Belmonte land a contract with Storm Bowling, a leading manufacturer of balls and apparel, and traveled with him to tournaments throughout Asia and Europe. He’s been called a cheat, told to go back to his native Australia a PBA Hall of Famer once called the two-hander a “cancer to an already diseased sport.” And not some granny shot, to be clear, but a kickass power move in which he uses two fingers (and no thumb) on his right hand, palms the front of the ball with his left, and then, on his approach, which is marked by a distinctive shuffle step, rocks the ball back before launching it with a liquid, athletic whip, his delivery producing an eye-popping hook, his ball striking the pins like a mini mortar explosion. When he first alighted on the scene, Belmo, as he’s known to his fans, resembled an alien species: one that bowled with two hands.
But Belmonte, 39, has never conformed to expectations. He would need a run of sustained brilliance, one verging on statistical impossibility, and could only hope that no one else would mount a similar charge.įor nearly every other bowling mortal, the idea of a comeback would have been an exercise in self-delusion.
He had snagged the 12th and final qualifying spot for the match-play round, to determine which five bowlers would make the last and most important show: the one that would crown the world champion.
The breaks just hadn’t gone his way: “A pin would wobble, and it stood, whereas in other weeks it fell.”
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“I can’t remember another World Series where I didn’t make a top five,” he said. Through 60 games over six days, Belmonte had failed to make any of the first three finals, each of which featured five bowlers. He was competing at the World Series of Bowling, one of the sport’s major championships, which features three different singles tournaments within a larger one: four chances to win a title on national television. Jason Belmonte was a study in black-black parka, black Jordans, black beard-and his mood was no less dark.
On a Wednesday afternoon in mid-April, the greatest bowler in the world, perhaps in the history of the sport, sat in a booth in a Bowlero in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a cold wind lashing outside, and pondered how it had all gone wrong.
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