Bowling Digest: Less is more: with the tour at a crossroads, PWBA president John Falzone is gambling

A NOTE TO BOWLING FANS regarding the 2003 PWBA season: Don't blink or you might miss it! The tour is staging just 12 tournaments this year, its lightest schedule since 1985. Those tournaments are being spread over a four-and-a-half-month time frame, from late May to mid-October.

It's a move designed to not only cut costs, but increase prize funds. After four years of declining purses, the tour expects to pay out $1,345,000 in prize money this season, the same figure as last year. And with a 37% reduction in total events (down from 19), the minimum purse in each event is expected to be $100,000, a 50% increase over the minimum payout last season.

According to PWBA president John Falzone, the streamlined schedule allows the organization to take a step back before deciding where it wants to go in 2004 and beyond. "What we did is we went back in and we reconfigured everything," Falzone says. "We said, 'What is in the best interest of everybody?' And the best interest of everybody, quite honestly, was the ability to not only shoot for prize funds of $100,000 but reduce player costs. They're paying less for entry fees, housing, travel, all those things. We're confident that it is a good model for 2003, so as we go into 2004 we can build off that model."

There is more money at stake for the players on a week-to-week basis than in the recent past. A first-place check is worth a minimum of $15,000, while the 24th spot (traditionally the last place that cashes) is worth $2,000, meaning that any player who cashes is assured of having some money left over after coveting her expenses. (Expenses tend to range from $750 to $1,000 per player per week, depending on accommodations and the distance between tournament cities.)

Anne Made Duggan, a 21-year tour veteran, sees the increased purses as a necessity if the PWBA is to survive. "It's imperative that all our tournaments have a minimum of 100,000, or [the tour] will flop," she says. "We can't have 12 $60,000 tournaments. That isn't why the players wanted fewer tournaments. They wanted fewer tournaments for more money. If we had our say--and the issue was, 'Would you rather bowl 20 tournaments at $50,000 or 12 at $100,000?'--we wanted 12 at $100,000."

Still, the reduced schedule has made some players uneasy.

"If I was in my 20s I'd be very concerned," says 35-year-old Wendy Macpherson, a 17-year vet. "Because I look at this as being a part-time job. You can't bowl for three months and do nothing for nine months, or work here or there for nine months. That's not what you want to do. You want to bowl."

"Our first reaction was, we were a little nervous because now we're only bowling 12 weeks," admits PWBA players' association president Cathy Dorin-Lizzi. "It's hard to make a living bowling 22. But if we're going to bowl less time for more money, overall the consensus was, 'Excellent idea.'"

Dorin-Lizzi, who is in her 11th season on tour, says that one of the players' biggest concerns was how the equipment companies, which provide a large chunk of the tour's sponsorship dollars, would react to the new schedule.

"They're our biggest supporters," she says. "What if the companies don't go for it, because of staffing? Are they going to keep women on staff? Is it worth it to keep women on staff for only 12 weeks? And what about getting equipment for players who aren't on staff? That's been a problem in the past."

The tour began play in earnest with the U.S. Open on Memorial Day weekend. The Open kicked off a stretch of seven tournaments in seven consecutive weeks, through mid-July, before the season concludes with five consecutive events from mid-September through mid-October.

Some players see a different upside to the shorter season. Ten-year veteran Tammy Turner points out that the streamlined schedule might encourage some good young players to commit to the tour for two or three months. "It's actually a good opportunity for a lot of bowlers who generally don't bowl fulltime to come out and bowl 12 tournaments to see if they would like to try it," she says. "A lot of good can come out of it. It's tough having less tournaments, but if it's a chance to have more money, that's great."

The size of the tournament fields is an issue for some. In last year's 16 standard-format events (leaving out the WIBC Queens, the Collegiate/Pro Doubles Challenge, and the Rollers and Bowlers), the average field consisted of 43.6 competitors, including amateurs. Exactly half of those 16 tournaments had fields of 40 players or more, topped by the Greater Harrisburg Open in mid-June, which featured a starting field of 59, including 12 amateurs. At the other end of the spectrum, just 34 bowlers showed up in Burlington, N.C., in mid-September and the Pasadena (Texas) Classic two weeks later. The Miller High Life National Players Championship in late July had a field of just 37.

Duggan, for one, would like to see the size of the fields increase dramatically. "I don't really ever think we will have as many [bowlers] as the men," she says, "but we need to have a hundred women out there bowling every week."

But Falzone points out that the same faces keep showing up at the pay window, week after week. Last year, no fewer than 17 players cashed in all 19 events. Three others cashed in 18 of 19, another in 17 of 19. And those figures don't take into account four players who, between them, missed 21 tournaments for various reasons but cashed a combined 54 times in 55 starts.

"People look and say, 'They only had 48 bowlers,'" Falzone says. "'How come they didn't have 96 bowlers?' Well, you know what? If we had 96 bowlers, in most cases the top 24 is going to be the same. What would we really be doing? We would be creating large field of people who can't compete, and that doesn't make sense. Realistically and historically, when you look at the women's tour--and quite honestly, when you look back at the men's tour--you could, on a week-to-week basis, pick 18 or 19 of the top 24 every single week before the tournament starts."

"You're still going to see the same 24 faces out there," Dorin-Lizzi admits, "because those are your best bowlers. You should see them. But from the outside, how appealing does that look?

"Your same 24 girls are going to be up there week after week, whether you have 30 entries or 60. But you never know--one of those 30 new entries could be an up-and-coming girl, who knocks one of us off once in a while."

Falzone expects to see the tour have bigger fields--but not until 2004 at the earliest. "Right now we're in the process of reviewing our regional program, he says, "and we're in the process of working with the WIBC to get to the higher-average woman bowler."

While college and other amateur bowling programs have grown in recent years, that hasn't led to an influx of new talent into the PWBA. In some respects, Title IX has been a two-edged sword for the organization.

Once, it was common for elite players to turn pro without stopping off in college first, simply because college bowling programs didn't exist. Aleta Sill, for instance, was bowling on tour as an 18-year-old and won her first title when she was barely 19. Lisa Wagner also turned pro right out of high school. Last year's BOWLING DIGEST co-Bowler of the Year recipients, Michelle Feldman and Leanne Barrette, came out on tour as teenagers, as well.

For today's players, however, college bowling is a realistic option. And if a player finishes her collegiate career with a degree in hand, she may be less likely to join a professional tour that pays relatively little, particularly when she may have a job offer elsewhere and/or she can make money bowling as an amateur.

PWBA marketing director Jan Schmidt says that reaction is understandable. "[A young player] has to look at it seriously," she says, "and say, 'I have a career waiting for me or an internship waiting for me. How can I go out on tour and bowl for $50,000 prize funds?' That environment has changed dramatically, so while the success of high school bowling and college bowling should be great for us, if there's not enough financial potential out there, they're not going to come our way."

The fact that there were just four rookies on the PWBA tour last year is particularly troublesome in light of the fact that just nine of the top 24 players on last year's rankings list are younger than 30. The youngest player in the group is 25-year-old Tiffany Stanbrough.

If a few of the thirtysomethings--like Macpherson, Dorin-Lizzi, Turner, Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, or Cara Honeychurch, all of whom are childless--decide to start families, the tour could find itself losing some of its most marketable names in relatively short order.

That possibility has occurred to Schmidt. "They're all at the age where they're saying, 'OK, I do it now or never,'" she says. "That's what they're looking at. I know many of them have said to me, 'We're looking at our future right now and where we want to be,' and it's unreasonable that they would hold off family life, or any other opportunity, with the prize funds where they're at."

Throughout its history, the PWBA has operated along the lines of a small business. Today it is owned outright by one man, chairman of the board John Sommer Jr. On more than one occasion, he has covered prize funds from his own pocket when sponsorship agreements have failed to materialize.

The arrangement has strengthened the relationship between the PWBA and its players. While there is often disagreement--witness the women's U.S. Open debate of 2001, when players threatened to hold out if they weren't offered prize purses equal to those in the men's U.S. Open--Dorin-Lizzi feels that players and management have, for the most part, a mutually respectful relationship.

"The ladies appreciate everything John Sommer and John Falzone have done for us," she says. "There isn't another organization that I know of where the owner of the company will fork out his own money to help pay the prize funds.

"He's a businessman [who] doesn't always make the right decision in our eyes. We don't always do the right thing as he sees it. But there isn't another person I know and another organization that would sacrifice his own personal being to keep the tour afloat. It still survives, and it's only because he did that."

But the mutual respect between the players and their management doesn't disguise the fact that the PWBA is at a crossroads. And it may take the entire 2003 season, or even longer, to determine if the changes that are being made will propel the tour toward a prosperous future or down a dead-end road.

"It seems to be the best direction for us to go in at this point in time," Schmidt says, "because, quite frankly, we just can't keep operating $50,000 prize funds with 30-some women bowling. It just doesn't make sense.

"We need to make [the tournaments] more of an event, and the best way to do that was to reduce our road-staff costs, reduce the players' travel costs, and give them the ability to earn the same total amount of dollars [as last year] and, at the same time, make it more of an event.

"If we kept going the way we were, at the end of this year we would have no one bowling. It just wasn't working."