As I watching "Rhino for President" team taking the Lead. I was thinking two things. 1. Everybody should be able to bowl this great tournament. 2. Have a division just for PBA members. {Team rules can remain the same, PBA members have to compete doubles, singles and all events in their own division}

Such a tournament already exists for singles compettion.  Its called the Masters.  Nonetheless, doubles and team competions, in addition, exclusively for PBA members would certainly be interesting.

The Masters is now in a seperate venue and doesn't count

Isn't the Masters being held at the Cashman Center the week before the Open starts in 2009 and then will continue to do that every year? I thought I read that somewhere...heck, I may have posted a link to it months ago!! LOL

That still a different tournament, format and all.

Don't know how young or old you are dwt825 but years ago they had what you are proposing. It was called the Classified Division (if memory serves me) It was strictly for PBA bowlers. They had their teams, singles/doubles and all events. Anyone else remember?

gobo

It was called the Classic division  in the 60's. This rule not only let everybody bowl but in fairness be better for the majority. Take a quick look at the leaderboard and you will find PBA members dominating.

The Classic Division ran from 1961 until 1979. In the end, there just weren't enough entries to support the division and the prize fund.

Thank you Matt for the info. So that was 29 years ago , maybe times are diferent, charge a little more entry fees to PBA members, or charge small admission to spectators{ PBA does that}, I know I would have paid to watch Rhino Page and his team bowl.

That would be an excellent idea to retry.  This is a venue that all bowlers should be able to bowl.  Give them there prize fund and let them be part of the venue. 

Some of us might even be inclined to enter the classic singles or doubles events, just for the pride of competing with the pba players.

we have those now. Thery're called TQR's and Regionals.

Again, those events are made for PBA members and if guests want to bowl they charge and extra fee.

When the classic division started it was pretty successful with two full team squads on the same day but as years went by it gradually got down to one full squad and even that hard to fill. It was pretty much all star PBA teams dominating but in 1973 it was the Strohs team from Detroit that beat the PBA touring pro all star teams in Syracuse. With so few participants the prize fund was subsidized and there were paid admissions that drew well, them and the Masters about the only times when there were really large crowds of paying spectators. I'm not sure that they even bother to charge admissions to watch the daily bowling anymore. One of the problems when it got down to one squad was how slow the pros bowled during the doubles and singles to make the team squads really, really late. In 1974 our team began bowling about the same time the pros were supposed to bowl and had a packed house cheering us on as we had a good run at the top spot and finshed in the top ten. The classic teams came on after us and the crowd watched about one game and many left since that first game got done at about 1am. Right now the touring exempt pros are not allowed in the national tournament and the rest of the PBA members who are not touring have day time jobs like everyone else and do their bowling in regionals on weekends and league bowl during the week, the majority of the members not bowling in many regionals and not any better or even as good as many of the best amateur bowlers.. To force all the PBA members to bowl in their own division would likely result in the loss of many very good bowlers since there would not be enough to them to have a very good prize fund and I doubt if the amateurs would want some of their prize money used to subsidize the prize fund of the pros. Even if the PBA members were kept out of the regular tournament the blue chip teams who had PBA members would replace them with other blue chip bowlers and those now on the outside looking in on the top 100 standings, where the good money is, would still be on the outside looking in. Don Gates

The team event rules could remain the same, that being 2 PBA MEMBERS ONLY. The doubles and singles,and AE would be a seperate division. then the OPEN would truly be open. It would also be nice to see PBA MEMBERS support there own division. I'm only guessing but I believe the member count is around 5,000!  I'm afraid the way it is going entries will start to falter, after PBA members dominate the prize list year after year. Losing a few PBA members could be better than losing 1,000 average Joe's

DW,  I think the membership number is closing to 3,000 than 5,000 bus suppose you are right and every PBA player attended and bowl in the doubles and singles.  Staying with the present $45 entry fee, $25 in the prize fund that would provide $125,000 to pay out in singles and the same amount for doubles.  With a 1/4 prize ratio how about making out a prize list for 625 doubles cashers and 1250 singles cashers that would attract them to make a pretty long trip for many and participate.

In a previous post I forgot to mention that the original classic division called for the team entrants to bowl two three game blocks using the first entry for all events.

 

Don Gates