Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Henderson’s Baker bowls over local competition

Like any other bowler at the American Bowling Congress Senior Masters, Henderson resident Dick Baker stepped onto the lane, put his bowling balls on the rack, turned his cell phone off and began to stretch before the start of the first day of qualifying on Sunday.

He even joked around with his fellow competitors. While patting him on the back, Baker whispered to Delano "Hobo" Boothe, forcing the 71-year-old to let out a little giggle.

How Baker presents himself on the outside, though, isn't always what he feels on the inside.

Even though Baker is a 13-year veteran of the PBA senior tour, he still finds himself a little anxious before throwing the first ball.

"I was pretty high strung and nervous, but I tried not to show it," Baker said. "So, I walked around and chit-chatted. I really have to work with myself to calm down."

Baker, 63, is one of 384 bowlers competing for 63 spots to join defending champion Gary Dickinson in three-game double-elimination match play that begins Wednesday at the Suncoast Bowling Center.

With the competitors narrowed down to 16 after Wednesday, Thursday will be the last day of competition. The championship match is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.

Of the 37 Southern Nevada bowlers in the field, Baker is the local favorite. With seven top-four finishes already this year, he has his sights set on his first senior tour title.

"I've won a couple of tournaments here in Las Vegas, a senior match-play championship, and a Legends Tour tournament," Baker said. "I also won a couple of regionals here. ... Everything seems to work out really well for me in Las Vegas."

After two days of qualifying, Baker leads all Nevadans and sits in sixth place, with a 2,383 10-game total. He is only 43 pins behind the leader, Rose Packard of San Jose, with one more round of qualifying left.

The last round of qualifying was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. today and the double elimination match play will begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

In last year's tournament, the average score to make the top 63 was a 190, but with faster lanes at the Suncoast, scores like that won't even land a bowler in the top 150.

"When you have high scoring tournaments like this, you've got to strike," Baker said. "But the most important thing is to fill the frames, so that when you do get a strike, or a double, it is adding pins to you, not helping you catch up again."

With fast, high-scoring lanes, pairing will be a key for anyone to take the title. On lanes 43-44, where Baker rolled a 290, Larry Franz bowled a perfect-300 game during the first day of qualifying.

"When you get into match play and your going from 64 to 32 to 16 to 8, the main thing is to get the 'W,' " Baker said. "I could bowl 690 on my pair and lose, and the guy on the next pair can shoot 570 and win. So, it is a matter of who your draw and where your bowling."

Wherever Baker finishes, his wife will be right by his side.

"I try not to miss a match," said Jackie Baker, Dick Baker's wife of 32 years. "I even have to give him some tips sometimes. I'm the coach."

With a little push from his wife, Baker joined the PBA senior tour as soon as he turned 50 years old, the required age of eligibility.

Ten years after giving up bowling, the retired ironworker said he came home from work one night and his wife had signed him up for bowling classes at the Showboat.

"She said she wanted me to go on the senior tour," Baker said. "I said, 'Jackie, I don't even bowl.' Then she told me, 'If you don't like it, then you can quit.' "

Baker finally agreed and in his first tournament on the tour, in July 1992, Baker said he lost before the finals, but ended up winning the tournament through the consolation bracket, and the $15,000 purse that went with it.

"All of a sudden that was the basis for my start," Baker said. "I really got interested after that."

Both of Baker's parents were bowlers, and his father use to take him to the lanes on Saturday mornings when he was a kid.

When he was 14, Baker became a pin boy at the local bowling alley.

"On Saturday mornings they would let us bowl for nothing," Baker said. "But the low guy had to go down and set the pins. So, you had to learn how to bowl real quick, or else you are going to be setting pins after every game."

After joining the Air Force and being stationed in Okinawa, Baker met Fred Naylor, a Navy civil servant and hypnotist, who took an interest in Baker's bowling.

"He would hypnotize me while teaching," Baker said. "So my concentration got so good nothing would bother me. I really got a basis for my bowling at that time."

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