Bowlerstore.com Classic…The Talk On Qualifying Day, “Getting Coldwatered”

Saturday’s qualifying round at Coldwater’s Pla Mor Lanes and the Bowlerstore.com Classic tournament centered around concern, and respect, for one of the tour’s toughest venues to win.

Coldwater, OH – Last week’s winner of the PBA Kremer Roofing Classic in Minster, 20-year-old Ethan Fiore, showed little rust, or letdown, or concern for what’s become one of the PBA tour’s most-talked about venues…Rick Harting’s Pla-Mor Lanes, in Coldwater.

In Saturday’s early morning qualifying round, the first of three for the day, Fiore shot out to take the lead with 1,738 pins, a 217 average for his eight games, and appeared to show little concern for Pla-Mor Lanes’ reputation for being a gruesome place to score and win.

In fact, most of the top qualifiers in the ‘A’ group were those with prior experience in Coldwater, who acknowledge that it is tough, and yet appreciate the challenge of saying you bowled, and won, in Coldwater, without getting ‘Coldwatered’.

“It’s a term you use at a place when you bowl well – throw good pocket hits – and get nothing to show for it,”  is how veteran pro Kyle Troup once described Coldwater.  Troup is missing from this year’s field because he’s in North Carolina getting married this weekend.

“It’s different,”  said veteran Zac Tackett on Saturday afternoon.  Tackett is the brother of world’s #1-ranked bowler, EJ Tackett, who’s missing this weekend’s 17th annual Coldwater tournament because he’s in Australia.

“It’s a matter of topography,”  Tackett smiles.  “That means that things aren’t level, and that no two lanes are going to react the same.  For instance, at Pla-Mor you learn that lane 2 is going to hook more than lane 1 because of the difference in surfaces.  You learn that after you’ve bowled here for a while.”

Zeke Bayt, from nearby Westerville, won the 2024 Bowlerstore.com Classic and is here to defend his title this weekend.

“I don’t know that I learned anything from last year,”  says Bayt.  “I just want to try and maintain what I did last year.  And that was hit the 1-3 pocket, make your spares, and stay confident mentally.  Try not to panic with a weird pair (of lanes), a weird shot, or a split at a bad time.  Apt as not you’re going to have plenty of frames to make up for it.

“Last year my first game here was literally a 150, and I came back to win.  So I use that experience this weekend and I remain optimistic.  But this is a hard house in which to score.”

Veteran pro and frequent TV bowler AJ Johnson, from Wisconsin, shares much of Tackett’s position on the building, the surface, and the variances in lanes from one pair to the next.

“You have to bring a bit more patience when you bowl in this building,”  adds Johnson.  “You have to have patience to know that a 180 or 190 game can be a good score here, and actually help you.  I’ve tried to keep notes [about certain lanes and tendencies] before, but when I come back the next year none of what I wrote down seems to matter.  There are some things that I commit to memory regarding this building…that lane 2 hooks more than lane 1, where in other buildings lane 1 hooks more than 2.  But from one year to the next the things you might write down don’t seem to matter.  It’s going to be different the next time you come here.”

Troy’s Kyle Bigelow rarely misses bowling the Coldwater event, and has a unique perspective on why Pla-Mor is such a tough challenge.  Bigelow, when he isn’t bowling, owns and operates Troy Bowl, on Dorset Road, in Troy.  His opinion, and experience, is that every building is different because every building is man-made and suffers from one kind of irregularity or another.

“If you’re comparing Coldwater to Troy Bowl, here it’s a topography issue,”  says Bigelow, who averaged 189 in Saturday qualifying and sits on the bubble for Sunday’s semi-final round.

“Each lane here is just a little bit different.  And when inexperienced people bowl here it can become even worse.  Without a doubt this is one of the hardest places we bowl in on PBA events.  But topography is an issue in a lot of bowling centers.  It’s not just here.  It’s hard to make a place like this level because of the ground, it’s been here since [1976], and even new bowling centers get that way sometimes.”

Which makes you appreciate even more the skill and expertise of the bowlers this weekend, like Ethan Fiore, who at twenty years of age was able to make the correct adjustments on the fly Saturday morning to lead all qualifiers going into Sunday’s championship competition.

True to AJ Johnson’s words about being patient, Fiore started Saturday by bowling a 179.  By his seventh game he topped out with a 269, on the heels of a 235, 225, and a 243.  This is why they’re the best in the world.  And this is why every bowler here gladly accepts the challenge of coming back to Coldwater each year in hopes of saying that they won at Coldwater.

Why one PBA executive shared with bowlers on Saturday, “If you feel like you’ve been Coldwatered we’d like to know.  It’s good for the legend of this place, and this tournament.”

No one seemed shook by it.  And no one seemed to mind.

Tournament notes:  

Semi-final bowling begins at 11 am on Sunday to cut down from a field of 32 to 16, then to 8, and on to the stepladder championship round of 4 that will begin sometime after 5 pm.  Admission is free, and the experience of watching someone – anyone – beat Pla-Mor Lanes is one you won’t soon forget.

Come and see for yourself.