If any of you are from the Northern California area, or Santa Clara area, you might remember the monthly 10 gamer at Fiesta Bowl and monthy 8 gamer at Alma Bowl. People used to come from all over Norther California area to bowl in these tournaments every month. With the demise of both centers those tournaments are gone......until now. Morgan Hill bowl also closed down, but its open and remodeled now about 3-4 years ago and their manager is a scratch bowler. He's re instated the monthly 10 gamer. He's got the go ahead for a year to get it going again. First Saturday of the month at Morgan Hill Bowl is a 10 gamer tournament with scratch brackets and side pots.

Erin

I wish we had something like that in NJ. I'd love to bowl in a 10 game scratch tournement. The only problem is there's way to many local pro's around these parts that average 245-250 on house shots. This one guy who's name I won't mention single handedly destroyed what once was the best house to bowl pots in on Sunday mornings! We use to bowl anywhere from 8 to 12 games at this house every Sunday morning, it would be anywhere from 12 to 16 bowlers. The problem was a bunch of the guys pride got in the way of telling him he shouldn't be able to bowl with are gang.

Sorry if I strayed off topic, I just had to get that off my chess!

The tournament is handicaped for now. the brackets and pot games are scratch. When the tournament was big and popular there was a scratch and handicap division for everything.

Erin

What kind of turnout would the 10 Gamer have? How high were the pots usually?

well we used to fill a 42 lane center; 3 to 4 people per lane. Some months less depending on what other bowling activities were going on. Starting at 7pm and we'd get pay outs around 2am. There was a handicap and scratch division. It only cost $40 to get into the tournament. Scratch brackets, pot games were of course extra. If there were enough people we had handicap brackets. High game pots were generally over 279. We would bowl with a group. One time one of our buddies shot 300 in like game 6 and had to split the high game pot for that game. There were several regional PBA people that bowled. One in particular is currently leading the PBA West in points. If he showed up, you knew it was going to be tough. Granted it was a house shot, because this was before Sport or PBA patterns. Still, there were some very very good bowlers. 10 games is a sloug, especially if you have never done it before. Pacing is essential. :-)

Bowling 10 games in a row is tough. You need a good mental game in order to keep up your concentration for that long. You get tired, hungry, thirsty. Having to take bathroom breaks while you bowl which a lot of people don't like to do. If you are not used to bowling that many games in a row, your arm can get tired, legs start to lag, wrist position is not what it was when you started. I bowled one back in college. I hadn't bowled all summer. I went down to my driller near St. Louis to get a new ball (Defense Zone). I had it drilled on Sat and bowled a 10 game sweeper in Bethalto (to those who are from that area) on Sunday. I averaged 225 for the first 10 games and qualified 10th for the finals (they took 10). I was pretty much spent. I had to bowl 6 more games to get to the stepladder finals. Needless to say I didn't have a game over 200 for those 6 and didn't make the top 4.

I bowled this tournament maybe 4 or 5 times before the center closed and we moved. Got rerated twice too. But I will never forget the first time. I hit game 7 and hit a wall. All of a sudden exhausted. Just the idea of an entire league's night worth of bowling was mentally draining. And it was around 11pm - Midnight. So its not like you just woke up and bowled. You had an entire day's worth of Saturday to do stuff. Next time I knew better and paced myself more efficiently.

That was the first Sat. of the month. I think it was the third Sat of the month that there was an 8 gamer (same format) in another city center. That center too is now closed and the 8 gamer is (as far as I know) gone.

Erin