The kingpin who broke the mould
WE NEEDED to cleanse ourselves after sitting through Irish football’s latest clown show on Kildare Street — if only FAI CEO Jonathan Hill had followed F Scott Fitzgerald’s advice about never using an exclamation mark because it is like laughing at your own joke — so, it felt good to come across Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube last Thursday.
Following the silly stuff that went down in Leinster House, it’s safe to assume that Torre, an American sports journalist, doesn’t know much about the FAI as he began his latest show by suggesting; ‘Sport is such a great case study in the ways that people’s desire not to look stupid make them worse at their jobs.’ We’ll just leave that there.
Torre made that point by way of introducing his interview subject. A 40-year-old Australian married father of three who may just be the most dominant professional sportsperson on the planet, at present. Not only that but he has revolutionised his sport to such an extent that parallels are consistently drawn with Tiger Woods and Steph Curry.
On this side of the Atlantic, not many will have heard of Jason Belmonte. But he is probably the greatest player in the history of bowling. He has won more major titles — 15 (just like Tiger) — than anyone else and been named Player of the Year a record seven times. He has won 31 times on the PBA Tour and amassed more than $3 million in prize money. This matters in America because bowling matters.
‘America is the home of bowling,’ Belmonte points out at one stage. ‘The American idea of bowling is rooted in popular culture.’ Hard to argue with that. From movies such as the Coen brothers’ timeless classic, The Big Lebowski and the Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin, where Bill Murray delivers maybe his greatest performance as Ernie McCracken, to television shows such as The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation to literature in Robert D Putnam’s seminal study of modern US society, Bowling Alone, this loud and brash sport is significant to a large portion of the United States.
So, when an Aussie arrived in the country and started to win all around him, it was never going to go down well. Even worse was the fact that Belmonte wasn’t even bowling in the correct manner, according to the conventions of the sport. He uses his two hands to throw, rather than the traditional one-handed method, and doesn’t insert his thumb into the ball. This was simply how he taught himself to do it.
Growing up in ‘a small country town’ north of Sydney, Belmonte’s parents opened a bowling alley called Orange Ten Pin when he was a baby. It was here when he was 18 months old that he threw his first ball. Using both hands. As he explained to Torre, he was bullied in Australia because he wasn’t throwing the right way. But he shut people up by beating them all — and it is also how he has managed to silence his critics in the States.
And there has been plenty. ‘I will start this off by saying I love my time here in America,’ he tells Torre before expanding on how he has been treated in the States. ‘I am Australian, I bowl differently, I knew I was going to ruffle feathers but I didn’t know by how much.
‘I was coming back after winning tournaments and it was hard. I was getting heckled by thousands of people and Americans are loud. Nobody else was getting heckled and it was stuff like, “Go back to your own country”, and, “You’re in our country now, you bowl the way we do”. I am thinking, guys, it is just a game of bowling,’ Belmonte recalled, still looking mystified at all the abuse he suffered.
‘The biggest switch from a feeling of sadness to a feeling of joy is when I started beating all of them. So they could say all that but all I had to say was look at the scores. It’s harder to convince me you are right when I am beating all your guys and not just beating them by one or two pins, I’m smashing your guys. My biggest thing is why do they care? Because I am winning.’
It was clear over the course of a fascinating chat that some criticism stung more than others. Such as Mike Voss, one of the legends in the game, who came out in 2016 and called Belmonte ‘a slow cancer in an already-diseased sport’. As someone he revered and looked up to as a hero, he admits that hurt the most.
And other opponents, and fans, have flung the accusation of cheating at him, simply because he is using both hands and doesn’t insert his thumb. ‘Cheat hits me hardest, because my understanding of the word cheat is that you know the boundary of the rules of the game and you are deliberately stepping outside that to try and win. I am within the rules, I am breaking no rules of the sport and to call me a cheat, you are attacking my character.’
Every sport is innately conservative, so when someone comes along with something that flips convention on its head and shows everyone a different way of doing things, criticism inevitably follows. Think of the opprobrium Jim McGuinness still gets for his tactics in the 2011 All-Ireland semi-final. And in America, things are just louder so the abuse is harder to ignore.
But just like Woods and Curry, Belmonte has changed the face of a sport. In bowling alleys across the world, people are now starting to throw the balls down the lane using two hands. Because they find it easier and they are actually able to propel it with more velocity. And several of the younger generation who are determined to knock Belmonte off his perch are now all using his method.
‘Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are now using my technique,’ he says. ‘The last estimated account was somewhere in the 30 percent mark of bowlers — old and young. They either just started off that way like I did, or adopted a new style, my style. And that number is growing.
‘When I went to a bowling alley as a kid, it was just me doing it this way and people were laughing at me and now you go into a bowling alley and there are dozens of people using two hands.’
It means that Belmonte is in a very select group of people who can say that they changed the whole complexion of a sport. As he suggests, like Woods with golf, he has to be a bit smarter now because so many people are mimicking his style. But he is the original. The pioneer.
And all because he wasn’t afraid to be different and risked looking stupid. Nobody’s laughing at Belmonte now. And the heckling has died down. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.