Monday, March 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Imagine playing a golf course where every hole looked the same. Exactly the same. Same length, same width, same dimensions, same contour of greens. Cloning, as applied to sports.
When professional bowlers travel from city to city, this is precisely what they face in each house. Every lane is set up to mirror the rest, so as to make the conditions fair for everyone. The amount of oil on a lane, and the number of feet down a lane that oil is applied, would not change. Lane 1 is oiled no differently than, say, Lane 70.
Short or tall, left-handed or right-handed, Hall of Famer or tour rookie, the playing field, as it were, is level.
Well, two years ago, Brian Voss -- inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1994 -- began to toy with an idea, a revolutionary concept which, if it pans out, could alter bowling dramatically as it charges toward the 21st century.
Voss' reasoning? Put simply, if a golf course varies from hole to hole, why shouldn't a pair of lanes?
"I've bowled my whole life, and I don't like the way it's being played," said Voss, 39 and winner of 16 national titles on the Professional Bowlers' Tour, which this week has convened in Las Vegas for the 38th annual Showboat Invitational. "I don't know how to change it, but my recommendation is to put strategic inclines in certain spots on the lane. It gives bowlers options."
Technology, Voss said, "has allowed a lot of players to excel at this sport. It's not better for the sport. Sports needs superstars; you have to have them in every sport. We need (television) ratings. If you don't have recognizable faces every week, you don't have ratings."
The explosion of technology, with particular attention to the types of bowling balls available on the market today, has brought a larger number of players into focus on a weekly basis.
Voss, quite outspoken Sunday night as he discussed the directions bowling has taken, is uncomfortable with this.
"About 10 or 12 years ago, when the leaders of our sport allowed geometric objects (read: two- and three-piece balls) to be placed inside the ball, there was an integrity taken away from bowling," said Voss, who won two weeks ago at the Northwest Classic in Richland, Wash. "That can't be restored."
A 15-year tour veteran, Voss set out two years ago to come up with a solution he felt would best serve the sport. If bowlers were truly to excel, they'd have to be able to adjust from pair to pair, he said. Voss would like to implement an invisible, oiled obstacle course, which players must quickly detect or face not making cuts.
The benefits, according to Voss: first, the guessing aspect of bowling would be eliminated, meaning a player confused by a certain oil pattern just couldn't grab a ball from his bag, cross his fingers and hope for positive results.
Second, bowlers -- if they can solve those oil patterns -- would be rewarded with good scoring. Think of it like a mathematics test, where every pair of lanes represents a question, and a bowler must try to unravel the mystery out before his allotted 10 frames on that pair have expired.
"What I think has happened in our sport would be like if (the PGA Tour) allowed the golf ball to go 400 yards," said Voss, who added that more research and development would be necessary before his concept could come to fruition.
The matter at hand
Voss and more than 150 professionals and amateurs began qualifying this morning in an extended 56-game format. The Showboat is one of two nonmajors that use the 56-game format as opposed to the normal 42-game setup.
Bowlers roll eight games today and Tuesday, with the blocks scheduled at 8 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Players alternate times those two days.
Qualifying continues Wednesday with the top 50 percent of the field bowling eight games at 11 a.m. The top quarter of the field then advances to the final round of qualifying, an eight-game block starting at 11 a.m. Thursday.
The field then is whittled to the final 24 for match play, which starts Thursday night with the first eight games. The second eight games of match play are Friday morning at 11; the final eight are Friday evening at 6:15.
The finals, from noon-1:30 Saturday, will be televised by ABC.
Bits and pieces
* MORE VOSS: Voss has won at least one tournament in each of the past 11 years, just three off the record held by Earl Anthony. Dick Weber and Don Johnson have posted 12-year streaks. "I'm in good company," Voss said.
* FOREIGN FLAVOR: Seventeen bowlers from Japan and four from Korea are in the field this week.
* ROTH COMING BACK: Hall of Famer Mark Roth, who has been nursing a ruptured quadricep muscle in his knee, has been working recently with another Hall of Famer, Johnny Petraglia, as he rehabilitates. Roth, one of the most dynamic performers in bowling during the last 20 years, was cleared to resume his bowling on Dec. 2, but has yet to rejoin the tour full time. Roth's 34 titles are second only to Anthony's 41.
* SENIORS GET TV DEAL: The PBA Senior Tour recently signed a 10-tournament deal with ESPN2. The seniors, who will be in Las Vegas later in the year, apparently were anxious to ink an agreement with the Deuce.
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