This is my report of the first round of the PBA Baby Ruth Real Deal Classic held at St. Clair Bowl in Fairview Heights, Illinois. The first 3 days of competition will be held at St. Clair Bowl while the TV finals will be held just down the road at Bel-Air Bowl in Belleville, Illinois. The last time the PBA had a tournament at St. Clair Bowl, I beat Pete Weber for the title to get within $2,000 of $2,000,000 in career earnings back in 1997. It was also the last telecast the PBA had on the ABC TV network. There was a regional tournament at St. Clair Bowl immediately following the National tournament in which I again beat Pete Weber for the title to go over the $2,000,000 mark in career earnings. I am going to change the way I do my reports since my score sheets are posted on my website with what pins are left in what frames. I hope the reports have all of the detail that my fans would like to see. The PBA used the 'D' pattern this week and I was on 'A' squad. Last season the 'D' pattern was the toughest patterns that we bowled on, but this year there was a modification and the 'D' pattern became higher scoring. For some reason, this week the scores on the 'D' pattern were very high, especially by some of the left handers who bowled on 'B' squad. I started the block playing 5 at the arrows going out to 2 with pretty good speed and rotation using a polished reactive ball (#0812). By the 5th frame of game 2 I had moved my target right so that I was looking at 4. By the 4th frame of the 3rd game I was looking at 3, but moved back to 4 after I left a 4-6-10. In the 3rd frame of the 4th game I moved into 10 using a medium slow hook. I moved into 12 on the 6th frame of that game. In the 1st frame of game 5 I moved right so that I was looking at 9, but picked my speed back up so that I was only going out to around 4-5. In the 3rd frame of game 6 I moved a board right with my target as the pair was a bit tighter for me. In game 7 I decided to try way out again, but my ball jumped left on the right lane very early going through the nose, so I moved into 9 on the right lane and stayed out on the left lane. In the 8th game I played out at 4 and told myself to make good shots. I had a nice reaction as long as I didn't tug the ball. But with the gutter right there, I kept tugging the ball. I made 12 really good shots in the 8th game and started the 9th game doing the same. But then I started tugging the ball again, but fortunately I had scored well enough in those 15 frames that it didn't bother me that much. I finished the block at +202 and the cut to the top 64 ended up being at +116. Bryan Goebel didn't show up for a roll off with Tommy Jones, so Tommy moved on to bowl in the 2nd round. My guess is that since they were tied for 40th and 41st on 'A' squad, Bryan probably drove home to be with his family since he lives around 5 hours away. He should know better than that having bowled on tour for over 15 years. 'B' squad again didn't have as many players make the cut, but they did have most of the really high scores as Jeff Smith and Patrick Allen both averaged over 250 for the round. With a couple of big finishing games, Patrick could have broken the record I set 2 weeks ago! 32nd place is at +178 while I am in 23rd place. I would guess that it should take around +330 to make the cut to the top 32 after 18 games have been completed. Hopefully I won't be scared of throwing the ball in the channel if I do end up playing way out! My games were 234, 237, 201, 197, 234, 203, 178, 279, and 239. I had 60 strikes out of 101 shots. I missed the pocket 22 times and had one strike while missing the pocket, a tripped 4-7 in the 7th frame of the 1st game. I had 59 pocket strikes on 79 pocket shots or a pocket strike percentage of 75. I had 8 opens, 5 were splits (4-6-7, 4-6-10, 7-10, 4-6-7-10, 4-6-7) and two missed 3-6-9-10's and one missed 3-6-9. I made the 2-10, and 5-7 splits plus ten 10 pins, four 4's, three 9's, three 3-6-10's, two 6's, a 2, 5, 3-6, 7, and a 6-10. Walter Ray