The pro bowlers are in town this week, but relax. You won’t have to hide your children, your pets or even your finest linen.
These are just regular guys. They don’t use limos or shop for Armani, but they don’t need spittoons, either. They’re just here to make an honest living at the $300,000 Brunswick World Tournament of Champions, then shower and move on.
In fact, if you go to the Brunswick Deer Park Lanes in Lake Zurich expecting to find a bunch of potbellied, cigar-chomping oafs donning fuchsia uniforms and brown polyester pants, you’re in for a surprise.
What you’ll find instead is somebody like Bob Learn Jr. He’s the perfect opposite, in many ways. The average bowler has a one-in-34,269 chance of rolling a 300 game. He has 52 of them, and that ties the record.
Learn also ties his shoes, and keeps them spit shined. He’s such a neatness freak that he’s on the Professional Bowlers Association image committee. That means if a member of the PBA Tour shows up dressed like a sportswriter, it’s a fine.
“We don’t get any respect,” says Learn, “and a lot of that is Hollywood’s fault. Whenever there’s a movie with a bowling scene, it’s always back to the ’60s. You know, the $6 shirt with `Eat At Joe’s’ across the back and the gut showing instead of the bottom button.”
The PBA Tour is attempting to market its product better, although the sport seems to sell itself. It’s a fact that 80 million Americans bowl at least once a year. Compare that with golf, where masochism has flattened out at 25 million.
Of course, if bowling isn’t a no-collar game, it’s still blue collar, as reflected in the financial statements. Learn leads the list of PBA wage earners for the current season, but his haul is merely $194,675. For winning the Masters, Nick Faldo banked $450,000.
The all-time money man on the PBA Tour is Pete Weber, at just over $1.7 million. Since 1992, when Learn started bowling for dollars as a regular, he has collected about $750,000. But his next complaint will be his first.
“I’m proud to be a professional bowler,” says Learn, 34. “And when I hear one of our guys say he’ll never let his kid pick up a bowling ball, that really ticks me off. This isn’t an easy way to make a living, but why should it be?”
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Nobody ever handed Bob Learn anything. He grew up in a mobile home in Erie, Pa., and maybe that’s why when he travels, all his socks and underwear are folded just right.
“My room in the trailer was 8 by 6,” he says. “You pretty well had to know where everything was. My wife, Stacey, is even more organized than me. We moved into a new house. I keep the lawn just perfect, and we never go to sleep with a dirty dish in the sink.”
Learn doesn’t leave much to clean up after his game, either. At the recent Flagship Open, right in his back yard of Erie, he registered his third career victory with a score of 850 for three games and a four-game total of 1,129. Those were the highest series ever on national TV, which is big because bowling is always on TV. It has been there forever.
“We do have mass appeal,” says Learn, whose aggressive style surely is good theater. He opts for power over finesse, and if he has posted nothing but strikes by the sixth frame or so, he plans on perfection and goes for it.
He’s not afraid of losing, or winning, or sharing his thoughts.
“We mingle more with fans than any athletes,” Learn says. “In some of these celebrity pro-ams, I see how stars from other sports shy away from people. I don’t understand that, but then again, I’m not in their position.
“It comes down to the money they’re making and we aren’t, I guess. Which is fine. If somebody gave me a $10-million contract for something I might do in the future, I’d probably give it all away, anyway. A shelter for the homeless. That’s what I’d build, talk about perfect.”