Bowling a sport? It is!

David Renzi

Friday, July 19, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

It seems the simplest of sports. So simple, in fact, that there's debate over whether it is a sport.

"I guess some people would still say that, but in my opinion, it's because it looks easy," says Bill Vint, editor of Bowling Magazine, the official publication of the American Bowling Congress.

"What looks difficult about taking a ball, walking up to a line, throwing it 60 feet and hitting pins? It looks very easy to do, in the same context that golf looks very easy to do."

Easy, that is, until you try put a little ball in a little hole 400 yards away in just a few strokes.

"Bowling becomes difficult," Vint says, "when you try to average 200 a game, game after game. Then it becomes a sport."

"It's not looked upon as a sport by dumb people," says Chuck Sosebee, president of the Southern Nevada Bowling Association. "Put it this way: It's like asking a jockey if he's an athlete. If you told him no, he'd probably kick you in the butt. (Bowling) is definitely a sport."

The contention that it lacks running and jumping, and that many of its practitioners resemble buffet-line professionals ignores the mental part of the game as well as the coordination, balance and, to a certain degree, strength and endurance it requires, Vint says.

"There are a lot of ways to have an athletic competition without running and jumping."

Bowling, Vint adds, "is a sport that has no gender, age or size barrier, and really no physical limitations. There are organizations for the blind, for the deaf, wheelchair bowlers -- almost every segment of the population."

"It's for anybody," says Steve Beckman, bowling center manager at Terrible's Town in Henderson. "Anybody can play and learn. Any age, any body style."

And therein lies the rub, or so it would seem. You've seen Fred at the local bowling center shoot 270 in a Thursday-night beer league, and you've seen Joe Pro win the Firestone Tournament of Champions with 190. What gives?

In a word, oil. The lane conditions the pros are subjected to are much different and more difficult than those of the typical league bowler.

"It's like shooting par at your neighborhood par 3 golf course and shooting par at Augusta National," Vint says. "The problem in bowling is the obstacles you confront are invisible. You can't see the lane dressing, and because you can't see it, you don't know where it is or isn't, and the only way you can tell is by throwing the ball."

He uses the old driving-on-a-sheet-of-ice analogy to describe the effects of oil on a bowling ball.

"It hydroplanes over the top of it and you can't control the direction the car's skidding. Once the tire hits dry pavement ... it'll stop and jump.

"On a bowling lane, when in an area where there is no oil, and the bowling ball hits the dry surface, the friction between the ball and the lane controls how the ball is going to react."

Joe Salvemini, the house pro at Sunset Lanes and a three-time winner on the Pro Bowlers Tour, says equity for all (left-hander, right-hander, straight-ball thrower, hooker) is the top priority among house lanes.

"They put the emphasis on scores."

The basic oil pattern on most local lanes is concentrated in the middle and less on the outside boards, leaving more room for error.

"If you pull the ball and miss the target, the heavier concentration (of oil) allows the ball to say on line," says Salvemini, who has rolled seven perfect games on the pro tour and 26 overall.

On the PBA tour, the lanes are "stripped," meaning they're alternately wet-wet, dry-dry, wet, dry, wet. As a result, the pros have to create a space for their shots, while the lane creates the space for the amateurs, he says.

"The PBA conditions are the toughest in the world," says Salvemini, a 16-year PBA member. "There are times when the scores are real high, but the conditions are still a lot more difficult because they change so much.

"When you have tougher conditions, it makes it tougher for the average bowler. A lot of locals will go out on the tour and get eaten alive. They've never been exposed to that."

Salvemini's PBA victories came in 1980 (his first year on tour) at the Rolaids Open in St. Louis, in 1983 at the Miller High Life Classic in Syracuse, N.Y., and in 1989 at the Columbia 300 Open in Austin, Texas.

In St. Louis, he defeated hall-of-famer Johnny Petraglia, 206-200; in Syracuse he routed Steve Cook, 235-187; and in Austin he beat Dave Ferraro, 247-221.

The pressure of playing and winning on national television also separates the pro game from the amateur. Local bowlers are free of the lights, camera, action of a PBA finals.

"It's awesome. It's the greatest feeling in the world," he says of making the network television finals. "It can be scary; the toughest thing I experienced was the lights. They're so hot, and I have a weak right eye. I never bowled badly on TV -- I never bowled great, either -- but I bowled well enough. I had a lot of seconds (eight). But there's no other feeling like it. That's what it's all about."