Jesper Svensson defies haters, wins 11th (12?) career PBA title
Svensson completes wire-to-wire victory at PBA Best of the Best Championship in Jackson, Michigan.
Do you hear that sound? Those are the hollow cries of the peanut gallery, clambering to ban two-handers, left-handers, ranch on chicken wings and urethane.
Only one of those is justified.
The Summary
Jesper Svensson and Packy Hanrahan — a pair of two-handed lefties using urethane, eating habits unclear — faced off in the title match of the THE STORM CUP: David Small’s Best of the Best Championship last night. (Which is an egregiously long name. I understand there are sponsors to appease, but yeesh.)
Svensson defeated Hanrahan 248-216, claiming the $20,000 prize and his 11th official PBA title.
Jeff Richgels and Eric Hartman would argue it’s actually his 12th. Richgels wrote Svensson won the Brunswick Ballmaster Open in 2013 as a non-PBA member.
By my count, Svensson moves into 8th in career titles among active PBA players as well, an absurd feat considering he’s just 26 years old.
Two notable players from this Sunday’s US Open telecast performed quite differently in qualifying. Anthony Simonsen trailed only Svensson after six games, while Jason Belmonte sat 67th of 72 entrants. Six games later, Simonsen dropped to 29th and Belmonte surged to 33rd — but both missed the cut.
Other notable finishes: Anthony Neuer 5th, Kyle Troup 8th, EJ Tackett 10th, Jake Peters 19th, AJ Johnson 44th, Francois Lavoie 47th, Tommy Jones 50th. Sean Rash did not bowl as he served his suspension from last month’s outburst at the Players Championship.
The Setting
The eliminator format is nothing innovative, but it’s something I didn’t expect in a PBA tournament. It spices up qualifying, removes the going-through-the-motions players and didn’t affect the — pauses for dramatic effect — integrity of the tournament.
I think it worked? I’d be very curious to hear what the players thought of it.
The crowd at JAX60 in Jackson, Michigan delivered the electricity and professional environment that the FloBowling livestream would have otherwise failed to capture.
I’m just a college kid with zero insight or authority, but I would’ve loved to see the stepladder on national television. (The final two-game eliminator could have succeeded on TV as well.) Now I’m sure the PBA would have shared my belief, so it’s not like I’m standing on an island here.
The Details
Svensson averaged 246.6 over 20 games of qualifying to secure the top seed for the stepladder finals. While he led the initial 12 games of qualifying averaging 262, the only three players not to average over 200, ironically, were all left-handers.
Despite Svensson’s sustained dominance, Nick Pate almost ran down him to steal the top seed. Entering the final two-game eliminator round, Pate trailed Svensson by 101 pins. Though Pate cut the deficit to just 12 (!) after the first game, Svensson staved off the right-hander’s valiant comeback attempt.
Packy maintained position inside the top-four throughout the entirety of the competition, and earned the 3-seed for the stepladder. Dom Barrett, who let me down a week ago at the US Open, made up for his shortcomings by earning the final berth on the stepladder finals.
Barrett did not bring his A-game to the stepladder — a death sentence on this high-scoring pattern — and Packy advanced with a 236-211 victory.
In the semifinal, Packy fell behind early against Pate. The tides turned later in the match as Pate super-washed-out in the 7th frame. Packy then slammed the door shut in his 9th and 10th frames to set up an a battle of two-handed lefties for the title, which I’d bet caused fits in the USBC Discussion Forum on Facebook. (I wouldn’t know. I’m banned.)
Svensson stuffed a 10-pin on his first shot in the championship match, then blitzed Packy with back-to-back strikes. This prompted the announcers to essentially declare the match over, which, while perhaps premature, wasn’t inaccurate in the end as Packy couldn’t string strikes to put any sort of pressure on Svensson.
The Fill Shot
When you lead a tournament from Game 1 through Game 20, almost literally, you should walk away with the trophy in hand. It’s not that Svensson deserved the title — I don’t like the connotation of the word — it’s that bowling is one of the few sports where someone can lead a tournament by a million pins and not win the tournament.
