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| Ron At Eagle River Bowl |
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| Ron Mohr |
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PBA Senior Tour proves no match for Ron Mohr's angel
9/14/11
By Gianmarc Manzione
USBC Communications
One thing you learn when you lose the one you love is that you have nothing left to lose.
That, above all, is the thing Ron Mohr had learned by the time he made his first shot of the 2011 PBA Senior Tour season. He had no idea how things would turn out after half a year away from the lanes, or even if he really wanted to bowl at all. But he did know one thing: No loss in a bowling tournament could possibly rival the loss he had just endured.
And everyone in the building knew it the day a messenger lunged out of nowhere to slap out a 10 pin at Harvest Park Bowl in Brentwood, Calif., giving him his third title in six events.
“I got the angel, baby! I got the angel!” Mohr exclaimed as he realized he had just won again. “That’s all it can be!”
The angel is Mohr’s wife of 12 years, Linda Mohr, who passed away in January from complications following elective knee surgery.
“I actually had enough time on the approach to think about what an unbelievable year it had been, how I had escaped so many times, been through so many close matches, gotten so many breaks, that I guess I had used up my nine lives,” Mohr recalls of that moment.
And then the 10 pin fell, and the year he describes as an “incredible script” completed another riveting scene. Mohr spun around and shouted “Yes!” as he pumped his fists. The Xtra Frame crew roared with shouts of “Oh my God!” And PBA Tournament Director Corey Kistner summed it up with the succinctness of one who knows how often words fail us.
“That may have been the most incredible finish in a Senior Tour event during my career,” he said.
But Mohr, a three-time member of Team USA, got the feeling he had an angel on his side long before then. It took him all of one game to figure it out.
“It was the very first game of the first tournament of the season. I bowled a 185,” Mohr remembers. “Normally my body temperature would be about 115 after a game like that. I would be fuming inside because I am already under and behind the leader. But for some reason an amazing sense of calm came over me. It was like ’You will be OK. It will work out. You will be alright.’ I have to credit Linda for that. It turned out to be a pretty good block, and I finished fourth.”
To the dear friend whom Mohr credits as his biggest help in the weeks following his wife’s death—a time during which he says he was “just a zombie”—that is the most noticeable change in Mohr’s character.
“He knows now that it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad game or lose a match,” says Jackie Graeber. “I think that’s what helped him out so much this year, because there’s no pressure.”
And by the time his angel slapped out that 10 pin against Hugh Miller at the PBA Senior Northern California Classic eight weeks later, his finishes in the first six tournaments of the year were as follows: fourth, third, first, second, first and first.
One of those firsts came at the Senior U.S. Open, the first tournament he bowled after finally having the chance to bury Linda on June 1 because, as Mohr puts it, “you don’t bury people in Alaska in the winter time.”
When Mohr returned to the lanes just days after the burial to seize that Senior U.S. Open title, his angel got back to work just as quickly, slapping out those stubborn 10s when he needed them most, carrying him through one tight 10th frame after another.
“I don’t know how you could write a more incredible script,” Mohr says. “To beat two Hall of Famers in Wayne Webb and Walter Ray (Williams Jr.) for my first major at the Senior U.S. Open, and then to wrap up the Player of the Year in Jackson was just an amazing thing. It was the completion, the finale, and I had my angel helping me out through the whole process.”
To Mohr’s brother Jim, his performance in the aftermath of adversity is beyond human understanding.
“To have that long of a break away from the lanes, and not even really know or care whether you bowl again, and then to go back and attack it and be even more successful than you were when you won Player of the Year, I just don’t know how he did it,” says Jim, who operates a gaming website for special needs children.
After wrapping up his first Player of the Year award in 2009, Mohr hesitated to think of himself as anything more than “just a pretty good bowler from Anchorage, Alaska.” And if you think he considers himself much more than that after the most dominating season in the history of the PBA Senior Tour, you don’t know Ron Mohr.
“After my wife and I went through the end of 2010 and early January, it really put life in perspective,” Mohr explains. “I realized that no matter what happens, even if I were to win the Player of the Year this year, I still have to go home and take out the trash, and feed the dogs, and mow the yard. I have already done the life-changing event thing; now the rest just falls into place.”
That is the Ron Mohr bowlers will face at this year’s PBA World Series of Bowling, an event which Mohr says he is “98% sure” he will enter. At 55 years old and without a single regular PBA Tour title to his name, the odds might seem to be stacked against him.
Time will tell what Ron Mohr’s angel has to say about that.
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| Have You Been Bowling Lately? |
An Avid Bowler
November, 2010
Have you been bowling lately; still think it’s only for old people and their friends? Well get ready for a big surprise! We have bowlers from age 6 to age 86, seven days a week! Eagle River Bowl features 24 lanes of thundering fun as well as an awesome snack bar, a video arcade and a full service bar.
I stumbled on the bowling alley in Eagle River a little more than a year ago and thought I’d go throw a game or two as I was brand new to town, didn’t know anyone and had plenty of time on my hands.
As I entered the bowling alley, I was greeted by a cheerful counter girl who was trying to organize the local high school bowling team; a whole bunch of laughing, jostling kids with flushed cheeks, dragging off mittens, hats and boots. I smiled to myself, remembering being part of just such a bunch of kids, “back in the day”, when I bowled on my high school team.
I was actually surprised to see so many 15 to 18 year olds that excited about a game I assumed had become obsolete to the younger generation; this was going to be fun!
I bowled that day, alongside the kids; I learned about “neon bowling” on Friday and Saturday nights, about elder brothers and sisters who bowled on “leagues” on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, about their parent’s Saturday nights out at the bowling alley, how the kids couldn’t wait to be old enough to join an adult league and so on.
I watched the dedication of the coaching volunteers, trying to teach the wriggling mob how to slow down, take a deep breath, quit looking at the cute boy on the next lane and concentrate on the position of their hand, the ball, the arrows on the lane and the end result; Wow! Tough job there! I ended up laughing out loud a few times at the kid’s antics.
In that one session, I regained an amazing amount of optimism about this sport that I had loved most of my life.
Now, a year later, I bowl on a league every Tuesday and have met so many new friends, both young and old. I still see some of the kids who were there bowling that first, snowy, November day; they always have a cheery “Hey you!” a quick smile and sometimes a bowling triumph or horror story. I still think to myself how lucky I was to have stumbled across the bowling alley in Eagle River that snowy November day.
So, if you haven’t been bowling lately, hop off the couch, brave the cold and come have some fun, no matter what your age! I will see you there!
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