What the World's Greatest (Two-Handed) Bowler Can Teach You About Daring to Look Stupid

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 3 Because I have a condition.

Speaker 4 Singular chirophobia.

Speaker 5 The fear of using one hand.

Speaker 2 Right after this ad.

Speaker 1 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

Speaker 1 You just said that you need to censor yourself for this because I want to talk about Ben Simmons.

Speaker 7 Bro, you know how I feel about Ben Simmons. I've said some things off the record about Ben Simmons that I can't tell you.

Speaker 9 I think are actually,

Speaker 1 yeah, beyond the pale, like too much.

Speaker 11 That are actually true, potentially.

Speaker 14 So, Ben Simmons, for people who don't know, Ben Simmons, our number one overall pick, former Philadelphia 76er, now Brooklyn Net, is back playing basketball.

Speaker 1 He came back

Speaker 10 just weeks ago after being away.

Speaker 7 And you and many people are already shitting all over his existence, he's an embarrassment, and I don't know why he's still doing this to himself.

Speaker 2 Have never stopped all over his existence, I should say.

Speaker 7 Just go enjoy your millions of dollars and watch Love is Blind. Like, why are you continuing to embarrass yourself?

Speaker 1 You want him to just give up, bro?

Speaker 7 Just enjoy the rich, like the spoils that you created.

Speaker 1 I'm not here to say that Ben Simmons should be free from criticism. I call him specifically, I call him a flying car without a stereo.

Speaker 7 Yeah, which sounds awesome until he like, hey, shoot the ball, bro.

Speaker 20 And then then what does he look like?

Speaker 17 That's the stereo.

Speaker 7 A camera or something. Like, enough.

Speaker 1 That's the stereo. So look, I actually agree with you on this level.
He needs to do something different about his shot.

Speaker 1 And many people have been saying this to him. And he does refuse to change.

Speaker 1 And that part has been very frustrating for me, the guy who's trying to carve out the lonely job of being Ben Simmons' political strategist.

Speaker 1 I've been trying to send him these messages around like, do something different about your shot because because

Speaker 1 there have been many people who have struggled at the free throw line specifically where Ben Simmons is abysmal.

Speaker 18 Ben Simmons

Speaker 18 and he misses again. He's missed five consecutive free throws now.

Speaker 1 He's abysmal to the point where he's afraid even to like really drive to the hoop in the same way because he's afraid he'll get fouled.

Speaker 1 This was the whole thing with the Hawks, you know, where he passed the ball in game seven with the Sixers and it was traumatic for me.

Speaker 1 And I just can point to many examples where, like, hey, Rick Berry became an over 80% free throw shooter.

Speaker 7 89%

Speaker 1 because he did what? He shot granny style with two hands. Like, and Rick Berry's been saying this forever.

Speaker 24 With my two-handed, under-handed free throw, it's a lot easier, I feel, to get in a relaxed situation.

Speaker 24 I like to bounce the ball, my arms hang down, my knees are bent, I'm relaxed, cock the wrists, follow through.

Speaker 1 So do that.

Speaker 7 The thing is, as embarrassing as that looks, it's not as embarrassing as what Ben Simmons is doing because the ball's going in the net like 89% of the time.

Speaker 1 I do want to be fair to Ben Simmons, his free throw stats here, because career,

Speaker 14 yeah, he's

Speaker 26 this is bad.

Speaker 13 What's the number? Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sub 60%, 59% career.

Speaker 7 Bro, bro, I'm not even kidding you. I could do better than that.

Speaker 1 Sub 50%.

Speaker 7 No one's guarding him at the free throw line. You understand that.

Speaker 1 And in fact, he's taking fewer free throws than ever so far this year.

Speaker 14 Pathetic.

Speaker 1 Less than one a game because he doesn't want to even try.

Speaker 16 No, it's pathetic.

Speaker 1 The other thing that's just crazy about this to me, if you will listen to me for a second, Ben will listen to me, is that in Korea, in the Korean Basketball League, they're doing something completely different from Rick Berry that's also working.

Speaker 1 Because watch this, Cortez. Look at this.

Speaker 1 So this is Korean basketball, and these guys are deliberately shooting bank shots

Speaker 1 at the free throw line.

Speaker 1 And so so all of these, yes, they look stupid as hell, deliberately try to shoot it off the glass, but these guys are collectively shooting, like Rick Berry, over 80%

Speaker 1 doing this. It's working.

Speaker 17 Clearly.

Speaker 1 It's ironic, right? You don't want to be humiliated. And so you do something repeatedly over and over again.

Speaker 1 that results in more humiliation when the real solution, I would argue, is to embrace a technique that everybody does and has for a very long time laughed at.

Speaker 7 No, 100%. That's well said.
And so if he started doing this and looked like an imbecile in his eyes, he'd look less like an imbecile in my eyes because the ball would be going in the net.

Speaker 1 And he's trying something different, right? And so to me, sports history is full of these things. Sports is such a great.

Speaker 1 case study in the ways in which people's desire to not look stupid make them worse at their jobs, right? Like, so for instance, I've been thinking a lot about Dick Fosbury.

Speaker 16 Who?

Speaker 1 Dick Fosbury is the guy who changed the high jump. He was an Olympian, 1968, Mexico City, summer games.
He changes the high jump because, as he explains it, he did this.

Speaker 30 When I was in grade school at Roosevelt, I learned the scissors style, which was an old style. Got into high school where my coach tried to convert me to the classic style.
I was a complete failure.

Speaker 30 Went back to the scissors and I changed it.

Speaker 30 I moved my body position in order to jump higher and make it easier he does the whole thing facing backwards the way he came it was so radically different that it garnered a lot of attention and everywhere i went the crowd was going nuts it took a generation for all of the high jumpers to adopt it but uh today it's universal i saw you i saw you what very very uh obviously grinning as soon as he said i was scissoring um but he changed it to the point point where he now moves his center of gravity because he's going backwards headfirst over the bar.

Speaker 1 And he inspired literally everybody else in the sport to do the same thing. And it looked stupid at first.
And so I wanted to do an episode today.

Speaker 17 Did you just burp?

Speaker 7 I cleared my throat. If you wanted me to burp, I'll burp into the microphone.

Speaker 22 I don't want you to burp.

Speaker 13 Okay, very good.

Speaker 1 What I wanted to do, speaking of looking stupid,

Speaker 1 is find the foremost example as an inspiration potentially for Ben Simmons for a a guy who did exactly this, right? A more modern example because they decided to look dumb,

Speaker 21 got better and changed everything. And so, um,

Speaker 8 I had to go bowling.

Speaker 31 Really?

Speaker 7 That's right, you probably suck at bowling, not anymore.

Speaker 21 We are sitting here at a bowling alley.

Speaker 2 I don't think I've bowled in maybe a dozen years. So this is not my comfort zone, leaving the studio and sitting here across from you.
Do I call you Jason?

Speaker 22 Do I call you Belmo? What should I be doing here?

Speaker 36 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 36 I'm good with interviews.

Speaker 2 So I just want to even further simplify it.

Speaker 8 you're the you're the two-hander i'm the two-hander yeah i i

Speaker 22 i bowl with two hands when you mention two-handedness you sort of imagine rick berry in my mind like granny style like underhand like doesn't quite yeah it doesn't quite look like that

Speaker 1 so i should just explain what jason belmonte's iconoclasm actually looks like here because Belmo and I have just finished lacing up our bowling shoes here at Bolero, this place in Times Square.

Speaker 1 And what I can tell you is that that the dude's like 5'10 40 years old dark hair light beard we talked about our kids for a little bit he he's just this deeply unthreatening and unassuming looking dad

Speaker 35 unless of course you are a professional bowler

Speaker 33 in which case the man is a revolutionary

Speaker 1 because as every instructional bowling vhs tape throughout time will teach you, real bowlers roll the ball with one hand, with their thumb in the thumb hole.

Speaker 27 This is basically the first law of bowling biomechanics.

Speaker 43 Fred, you know, through the years I've had a chance to watch the greatest players in our game and without question they all have a master plan to greatness. Mr.

Speaker 44 Denny, and that's what we'd like to share with our players today, is one, the biomechanical movements to the foul line, the movements of the body.

Speaker 1 But the movements of Belmo's body are extremely different.

Speaker 1 This isn't Granny's style. He's actually grasping the ball with two hands at the same time, and he refuses to stick his thumb in the thumb hole at all.

Speaker 1 And so then he rolls the ball with both hands from his right side, having swung it backwards and then forwards, generating this truly impressive amount of velocity.

Speaker 5 Here's the top seat.

Speaker 37 His first ball. Looks good.

Speaker 3 Not sure I expected anything different.

Speaker 1 And so what I wanted to find out here first is just how Belmo wound up resembling and really epitomizing by conventional bowling standards a completely idiotic technique.

Speaker 47 The action is from the side of the body.

Speaker 48 It's not from between the legs.

Speaker 20 And so you've got this

Speaker 19 athletic kind of approach.

Speaker 2 I want people who are not watching on YouTube and the Draftings Network to know that Jason just put athletic and scare quotes with his fingers.

Speaker 40 Well, because I think the traditional sense of the word athleticism is high energy or, you know, huge exertion of power,

Speaker 55 where bowling is more like golf, right?

Speaker 54 Where you can see an athletic swing.

Speaker 56 And so the game has changed.

Speaker 40 It is more athletic now than it ever was. And so my parents built a bowling center when I was born.

Speaker 13 In Australia. In Australia.

Speaker 39 Small little country town.

Speaker 55 They'd never bowled a bowl in their life.

Speaker 40 Purely a business idea that came to them through family conversation.

Speaker 58 And so they weren't coaches, they weren't experienced players themselves.

Speaker 2 They didn't inherit the traditions of bowling.

Speaker 56 And to be truthful, I don't think they cared about how I bowled.

Speaker 47 I was 18 months old when I rolled my very first bowling ball.

Speaker 11 Today we have really light bowling balls, but in the 80s they hadn't developed super light balls yet.

Speaker 54 They were quite heavy.

Speaker 49 And so as an 18 month old toddler, I would kind of like grab the ball and roll it off the ball, return it.

Speaker 62 It hit the floor and I would push it and try and lift it up and then just kind of roll it down the lane as best as I could.

Speaker 54 And so until I was old enough where that ball was light enough for me to throw it traditionally, I had too many years of me bowling in this

Speaker 40 way to just enable me to bowl, which was with two hands, that

Speaker 66 bowling traditionally didn't feel like me.

Speaker 46 And so

Speaker 66 it was probably from the ages of like five through 10 where you hear the, come on, you're a big boy now, right?

Speaker 11 Like you can bowl like everyone else.

Speaker 20 And I was like, but this is just how I've always done it.

Speaker 60 There is one moment in particular that I will never forget.

Speaker 49 There was this huge coaching clinic ran by Australia's,

Speaker 47 the Australian team, team the national team coaches selectors it was this huge event and so we get there I sign up it's my turn now to perform in front of the coaches and so I bowl my style and the coaches are looking at me they don't say anything and I bowl another shot and the coaches say okay now that you've done mucking around here can you can you throw one properly please So I'm thinking, like, maybe they want more strikes.

Speaker 73 Like, I got to get strike. So I throw a ball.

Speaker 19 I get a strike.

Speaker 40 I'm quite proud of myself. And they tie me out.

Speaker 46 They go, okay, listen, we don't know what you're doing here.

Speaker 40 If you ever want to be a great bowler, if you ever want to represent your country, if you ever want to

Speaker 57 win championships, you're going to have to bowl the way that we're going to teach it.

Speaker 40 So we need you to put your thumb in the ball and we need you to bowl traditionally.

Speaker 20 And so I humored them for that moment and it killed me because here was the very first time

Speaker 17 a true bowling authority.

Speaker 74 Right, the actual institution of the game.

Speaker 57 The actual institution of the game ripped ripped me apart.

Speaker 55 They wouldn't help me. The kids wouldn't bowl with me.

Speaker 67 And it was just this very alone feeling.

Speaker 77 So the very last session is a tournament where we play three games and all the kids bowl.

Speaker 39 And I won the tournament.

Speaker 46 And the prize was a free entry into next year's clinic.

Speaker 34 I decline

Speaker 34 the prize.

Speaker 40 Long story short, I was stubborn enough to continue on my own little path and I just found a way that works for me.

Speaker 2 Jason Belmonte.

Speaker 37 Seven in a row.

Speaker 11 I'm just marveling at the specific like random chance that leads to this specific like laboratory of innovation in bowling technique because you said your parents didn't give a shit about bowling the institution as its sort of like folk ways and best practices were concerned.

Speaker 15 And then you pop out and you're like this stubborn kid who's always been that way, it sounds like.

Speaker 61 Always.

Speaker 79 And you're like kind of this weirdly accidentally perfect messenger for this

Speaker 21 larger idea that you don't need to do it this way.

Speaker 6 You can look at it from that lens

Speaker 66 when you look back at it.

Speaker 57 But when you're in the middle of it, during the moment, you're not thinking about what this is going to turn into, or you don't think about

Speaker 60 my decisions today

Speaker 40 are going to have

Speaker 72 this kind of an impact down the road.

Speaker 49 This was just one little boy who wanted to do it his own way.

Speaker 72 And at the time, that's all I cared about.

Speaker 57 Now that I've had a career and I look back at it, the thing that I think I sometimes marvel at it is that

Speaker 40 Yeah, I mean, if I didn't start bowling at the age that I wanted to start bowling, would I have developed the style or would I be traditional?

Speaker 65 I don't know.

Speaker 64 And so there are so many things which is the slide indoors, right?

Speaker 40 It's the butterfly effect.

Speaker 66 It's like, I couldn't have written this script any better than how much.

Speaker 2 That's what's so funny to me about this is that, yes, there's an alternative timeline where you're a one-handed bowler.

Speaker 13 I don't know, would you suck in that way?

Speaker 37 I'll probably suck.

Speaker 20 Some other kid would invent two-handed bowling and I'd probably be like, oh, that's not how you're supposed to do it.

Speaker 11 You're supposed to bowl like me, traditionally. You'd be the bully.
You'd be one of the bullies.

Speaker 59 I'd be the traditionalist that's upset at this new wave coming through.

Speaker 81 Jason Couch, your take on two-handed bowling. I think it's a travesty that it's in this sport.
I'm old school.

Speaker 81 If you couldn't do it with one hand, you didn't try and do it with two. You just tried to make yourself better.

Speaker 40 I'm going to start this conversation off with, I love my time here in America.

Speaker 37 Okay? So

Speaker 34 anytime someone begins to say that.

Speaker 41 Hold on. All right.

Speaker 65 I'm going to start off with, America, I love you.

Speaker 49 And this is the home of bowling this is uh you know the american idea of bowling is rooted in pop culture yes it is important to america yeah i get it the big labowski i get it bowling ties the whole room that is america together that rug really tied the room together did it not

Speaker 3 this guy peed on it donnie please

Speaker 40 So when I came onto the scene, I'm Australian.

Speaker 69 I bowl differently.

Speaker 34 I knew I was going to ruffle feathers but I didn't realize it was going to be that much

Speaker 11 they have said you are now here this is the USA the big leagues you are starting from the bottom again and so I had to like accept right I'm gonna have to do this all over again the biggest difference is Americans allowed I would come back after a tournament going like

Speaker 37 this is

Speaker 60 This is a hard day because, you know, I'm getting heckled.

Speaker 50 No one else is getting heckled.

Speaker 40 I'm getting heckled from the crowd.

Speaker 6 And I haven't experienced that type of heckling.

Speaker 57 You know, it is go back to your country.

Speaker 12 It is, you're in our country, bowl the way we do.

Speaker 6 And again, I'm like, it's just a game of bowling, guys.

Speaker 69 Like, why are we, why are we doing this?

Speaker 40 And I, I had to fight through that.

Speaker 75 And that was, that was hard.

Speaker 13 I apologize for smiling through your trauma.

Speaker 17 I do too.

Speaker 50 It's a weird thing because I look back and there were so many sad days because you're in this little environment.

Speaker 60 and for me bowling was like my second home it was a place I loved to be and I love the game so much and so when you have that passion and love with something you want to share it with the people around you and when the people around you are like we don't want to bowl with you like or you got to change or you got to do something different yeah it was like I don't get it The biggest, I think, switch in that, which when it came from feeling a sadness to a feeling of joy was when I would start beating them.

Speaker 68 Because now when they would say something, my return was always, look at the scores.

Speaker 20 I just beat you.

Speaker 56 So whatever you're saying right now, it's even harder to convince me you're right because

Speaker 52 I'm not just beating you by one or two pins.

Speaker 75 Like I am smashing

Speaker 47 you guys.

Speaker 52 Now what?

Speaker 46 And so it's always nice to have that ace up your sleeve when your scores tell a bigger picture.

Speaker 60 So not only was I stubborn, now I had the arrogance.

Speaker 60 And he does it.

Speaker 82 Jason Belmonte earns his first PBA major.

Speaker 13 Sports often feels like it has antibodies that are rejecting foreign invaders.

Speaker 61 And you were a foreign invader.

Speaker 2 And maybe the way that was just expressed, if I'm getting your story right, is that looks stupid.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And that's the antibody.

Speaker 54 And it's not how the game was meant to play.

Speaker 63 Okay.

Speaker 12 So that's the traditional.

Speaker 56 That's any sport.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 55 That's not how I grew up with it.

Speaker 54 This is not how I was taught it. And therefore, this new way of doing it doesn't compute.

Speaker 31 I would like to read you,

Speaker 74 Jason, a quote because it was the Players' Championship.

Speaker 13 It was 2012.

Speaker 2 There's a TV interview before the final.

Speaker 22 And your opponent, a gentleman named Mike Devaney,

Speaker 1 he said this.

Speaker 83 Uh, not watching Velmo and all that doesn't impress me, not interested, don't care. I throw it the right way, I put my thumb in there, the way I was taught, and everybody should throw it.

Speaker 83 So, I'm gonna show him what's up. What's up right now?

Speaker 78 Thanks, Mike. Good luck.

Speaker 49 I remember the day, and I was so focused about winning that I heard the quote, but I didn't let it necessarily affect me in the moment.

Speaker 78 Mike Devaney needs a double and seven.

Speaker 78 Anything less

Speaker 78 Jason Belmonte wins for the third time at this year's World Series of Bowling.

Speaker 29 And Belmo wins it.

Speaker 72 It was until the moment where I had won and then I could reflect on what had just happened that that quote, yeah, cut a little deeper.

Speaker 6 But when I hear it, the one thing that always kind of rings in my ear about it is like why do they care that's the thing that always I always go why do you care so much right and so if my score was worse than theirs they probably wouldn't care so this is what a hall of famer in your sport in the PBA here in America once called you he called you quote a cancer to an already diseased sport yeah that one hurt end quote Brian Voss mr.

Speaker 48 Brian Voss um

Speaker 1 why what what made you cancerous to Brian Voss?

Speaker 71 I'm going to defend him a little bit.

Speaker 34 Okay.

Speaker 50 I don't think

Speaker 40 he was referencing me as a human, as an individual.

Speaker 60 I think he was referencing what I do, my craft.

Speaker 40 And you can't deny that Brian had

Speaker 57 an extreme passion for the game and he wanted to protect it.

Speaker 70 how he thought was best.

Speaker 40 He thought something that was challenging its fabric was this new technique.

Speaker 57 It was the two-handed backhand in tennis.

Speaker 58 It was the Frosby flop in high jump.

Speaker 8 Yeah, Dick Fosbury.

Speaker 3 This was his version of all of those things.

Speaker 57 And he didn't like it. He was scared for the game that he grew up with, the game that he loved.

Speaker 46 I think what saddened me at the time was this was one of the greatest players in our history.

Speaker 40 Someone who I revered and someone who I competed against, someone who I had drinks with.

Speaker 79 He's actively trying to say that we cannot let this technique, your craft, your approach,

Speaker 2 destroy the game.

Speaker 13 And this is coming back around to the whole cheating aspect.

Speaker 13 And that allegation though on the level of the rule of law.

Speaker 12 So what is that?

Speaker 40 The word cheat hits me hardest because

Speaker 36 my understanding of the word cheat is you know

Speaker 20 the boundary of the rules and you are choosing to to purposely step outside of them to break them.

Speaker 57 You are cheating the game.

Speaker 56 I am within the rules.

Speaker 60 There is no rule to say that what I do, I am breaking.

Speaker 40 And therefore, because I'm within the square of the rules, to call me a cheat, now you're attacking my character as opposed to

Speaker 59 purposely go beyond the rules.

Speaker 66 So what I'm it breaks that mold.

Speaker 52 And to them, it hurts them.

Speaker 51 And I have to accept that.

Speaker 1 But this is where I now need to officially inform you what the rest of bowling has had to accept about Belmo.

Speaker 27 Because the guy isn't just a really good two-handed bowler at this point.

Speaker 1 For the last decade, Jason Belmonte has been nothing short of this generation's most most dominant professional bowler.

Speaker 17 Period.

Speaker 9 He's won an all-time record 15 major titles.

Speaker 1 He has a record-tying seven Player of the Year awards and counting. All of which means that that kid in Australia who got bullied, who no one wanted to bowl with,

Speaker 10 that kid is now, very arguably, the greatest bowler who ever lived.

Speaker 85 The best bowler on the planet steps up.

Speaker 86 Jason Belmonte, better known in the bowling world as Belmo, is a star of his chosen profession.

Speaker 86 There is no one else on this planet that can bowl a ball at 10 pins better than me. And that is a really cool thing to say.
And I never knew I'd ever be able to say it.

Speaker 86 So now that I can, I plan to say it as often as I can.

Speaker 1 And look, yes, as Belmo told me at one point, he would love it if there were another zero at the end of the paychecks that you get for being the greatest of all time in bowling.

Speaker 1 You get $100,000 for winning the players' championship, for instance, which just means that Belmo, despite winning that thing three times, is still flying coach from Australia.

Speaker 10 You know, just a reminder that the PBA is absolutely not the NBA.

Speaker 9 But what Belmo

Speaker 32 does have somehow, which very few, even NBA players have, is a song that someone wrote about him.

Speaker 1 It's a song that another bowler, actually, named Kevin Williams, wrote and performed

Speaker 27 about Belmo's life.

Speaker 63 But I never listened to it myself. And I get to work it.

Speaker 8 I did it on purpose. You know that I did it on purpose.

Speaker 59 Kev's a great young kid.

Speaker 80 Super talented bowler.

Speaker 40 Also a really talented musician and loves to rap.

Speaker 50 So I'm like, hey, we should do a song.

Speaker 75 We should write a song.

Speaker 54 And maybe I can play it as my strike song on the PBA show.

Speaker 50 And so we did.

Speaker 71 We found a beat.

Speaker 50 He thought up for some lyrics.

Speaker 51 And the only direction I gave him is I said, write about

Speaker 48 me from like your perspective.

Speaker 2 Which means that every time you bowl a strike.

Speaker 40 They play the music in the background and it's Kev's song. Yeah.

Speaker 26 But let me ask about why it is that your response,

Speaker 13 like in modern times, now we're catching up to the present,

Speaker 23 is something that a lot of the people who had been bullied or attempted to innovate and even successfully innovated, I don't see them do what you do, which is you actively like lean in

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 13 mock the mockers and make fun and make videos that are defiant and unapologetic.

Speaker 11 And you gladly say, I'm the two-handed bowling guy.

Speaker 2 Like, that's not a thing that a lot of other people in your position and other sports have done to that degree.

Speaker 76 I don't mind trolling the trolls back.

Speaker 50 And so there's so many things that I think about.

Speaker 47 What would be kind of funny, and one of the videos that I think you might be referencing is I purposely created this

Speaker 42 fake

Speaker 20 neurological disease.

Speaker 3 Because I have a condition.

Speaker 4 Singular chirophobia.

Speaker 5 The fear of using one hand.

Speaker 5 My earliest memories, I remember going to the doctors a lot and seeing one doctor and another doctor and a specialist and every doctor I just remember saying, you know, there's nothing we can do, there's nothing we can do.

Speaker 4 And I'm afraid he was born with it.

Speaker 87 You know, there's no cure.

Speaker 55 Hey, I bowl with two hands, but don't hate me.

Speaker 69 I have this problem. Everything in my life, I do with two hands.

Speaker 87 You know, even using, you know, cutlery.

Speaker 72 I can't just butter bread.

Speaker 57 You know,

Speaker 3 it's a process.

Speaker 3 You know, going out to restaurants, it's embarrassing.

Speaker 42 So I'm having a laugh about it.

Speaker 54 And in my mind, I released this video.

Speaker 8 It looks obvious.

Speaker 36 I'm having a laugh.

Speaker 51 Turns out, not everyone thought I was joking. And so I had this flood of people saying, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 57 I've been hating on you for so long.

Speaker 59 And now I realize it's not your fault.

Speaker 56 You were born this way.

Speaker 54 And there's nothing you can do about it.

Speaker 88 How you go through your life.

Speaker 40 So I'm like, okay, now I need to address this.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 13 you could go two ways. You can come clean or fundraise off of this.

Speaker 84 And my fear was, is these people now, like they're saying they love me where they once once hated me so I'm like if I tell them that I'm lying this is all fake this is actually my favorite of all the sliding door timelines of your life is the one in which you now have to perpetually argue that this is real I end up shooting another video

Speaker 71 in which

Speaker 39 I find this underground doctor that has special pills that will cure me All you need is one dose, pop it in, chew it up.

Speaker 44 Gotta chew it up.

Speaker 5 Are there a side effects that I should have?

Speaker 25 Too many side effects to go into right now, but believe me, it's gonna cure all your ills.

Speaker 34 Doctor,

Speaker 5 thank you so much.

Speaker 5 You have no idea what this is going to do for me. Godspeed.

Speaker 2 You are such a troll.

Speaker 72 You would think people would know that they would put two and two together.

Speaker 15 So this leads to this

Speaker 26 like fairly stunning phase to me as a bowling outsider where unlike in these other sports where again Rick Berry didn't inspire everybody or all these people who shoot differently and shoot weirdly they didn't change their games and by there I mean their sport.

Speaker 35 They didn't change their sports.

Speaker 1 Your problem now seems to be that

Speaker 15 everyone else, or at least a lot of these younger bowlers, now want to be specifically like you, and that your once shamed technique has become like clearly in vogue.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 40 I don't often get

Speaker 11 like emotional.

Speaker 57 There are moments where I'm like, I'll get a fan mail or a kid will come up to me in person and he'll tell me a little bit about his story.

Speaker 57 And sometimes there's a lot of trauma in this kid's life and he uses bowling

Speaker 70 as a way to escape it or to bring joy.

Speaker 4 And then he'll bowl the way that I do.

Speaker 54 Then you pan out and you see

Speaker 40 hundreds of thousands of people around the world now.

Speaker 23 Is it really that many now?

Speaker 51 Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more.

Speaker 12 It is more.

Speaker 39 The last estimated count was somewhere in the 30% mark of bowlers, old and young, who are either starting off bowling the way that I do or adapting and adopting the new style, my style.

Speaker 40 And so that number is growing exponentially quicker as well.

Speaker 49 And so you hear...

Speaker 36 these stories, then you go to a bowling center and you see the impact with your own eyes.

Speaker 40 Where when I was a kid, there was me,

Speaker 6 no one else.

Speaker 40 To now, as a 40-year-old guy, walking into a bowling center, and it's everywhere.

Speaker 40 The feeling, the overwhelming feeling of seeing a change of an evolution of just not just through my own personal game, but the sport.

Speaker 40 Man, that's one of those like me moments.

Speaker 34 Like, that's like a whole

Speaker 37 with two hands.

Speaker 37 Yes.

Speaker 16 Needs seven.

Speaker 16 First right.

Speaker 16 One big shot for Kyle Troup.

Speaker 16 One big event.

Speaker 11 He wins the 2023 PBA tour from Gothenburg, Sweden, Jesper Sensen.

Speaker 78 Yep.

Speaker 16 Needs three.

Speaker 38 Gets all ten. Give him number nine.

Speaker 58 Let's meet Anthony Simons.

Speaker 45 Simo is the baby-faced bad boy of bowling. Dropping out of high school at only 16 to become a pro bowler, his scrappy style has gotten him thaw.

Speaker 14 And when you grow up on the lanes, you grow up fast and tough.

Speaker 45 He's known for his low-to-the-ground, aggressive, two-hand style and aggressive attitude on the lanes.

Speaker 23 Some of these kids are really good.

Speaker 57 Super good.

Speaker 21 And they're coming for you.

Speaker 8 Like, they're actively

Speaker 74 like

Speaker 26 coming for the titles, the trophies.

Speaker 1 I mean, you, these are 15 major titles that you've won.

Speaker 2 That's more than anyone else in history.

Speaker 32 Seven player of the year awards.

Speaker 13 That's Typhoon the most all time.

Speaker 61 There are these young two-handers who want everything that you got, and they're using your tools to take it from you.

Speaker 1 And I just wonder what it feels like to be somebody who's now seen the full circle.

Speaker 13 And then truly, it's such a phenomenal sports story.

Speaker 1 You've seen the full circle of start by being

Speaker 13 shamed and laughed at and then try to be destroyed for being too effective and now suffering potentially because people are going to use it against you.

Speaker 33 What does that feel like?

Speaker 13 What's that emotional reaction when you get beaten by a two-hander?

Speaker 80 When I lose one-handed, two-handed, I'm equally disappointed.

Speaker 6 I'm pissed.

Speaker 51 And so I try not to separate who beats me by, well, he was two-handed, so it's a little bit okay because, you know, know, we bowl the same.

Speaker 54 No, I'm still pissed.

Speaker 49 The thing

Speaker 20 that I'm realizing now and why these kids are so good is because

Speaker 4 of what I've been able to do.

Speaker 51 And they've been able to put me up as a pin on the pin board

Speaker 46 to study.

Speaker 72 And I never had that.

Speaker 76 My son today can YouTube everything.

Speaker 85 One of the biggest growing trends in bowling is two-handed bowling. Almost all the young competitors out there to generate that power are bowling two-handed.

Speaker 85 And today, we're going to attempt, as best as we can, with Coach, to talk a little bit about the two-handed style.

Speaker 5 Yeah, as you mentioned, you are right, Mike.

Speaker 54 I was walking in blind.

Speaker 46 How do I fix my swing?

Speaker 42 I don't know.

Speaker 40 I guess I'm just going to have to go to the bowl and for a week, every day, I'm going to have to try new things.

Speaker 40 Now, someone takes my game, pulls it apart, and says, are you having problems with this?

Speaker 55 This is what Belmo does.

Speaker 72 How about you use this kind of technique in your swing?

Speaker 40 And it fixes them.

Speaker 54 And then I have to combat watching the kids on tour go, hey,

Speaker 12 that looks a little bit like me.

Speaker 42 Like that rhythm looks a little bit like me or that role or what you're able to do with the body.

Speaker 65 I think I've been doing that for a while.

Speaker 67 And it's the ultimate compliment.

Speaker 6 But it's also like, could you not have come like five years later?

Speaker 60 Like,

Speaker 42 let me have retired.

Speaker 66 I'm still here.

Speaker 63 Let me have retired.

Speaker 55 I'm still doing this.

Speaker 4 And then you can all go and break all of my records.

Speaker 13 It's kind of an amazing amazing uh

Speaker 2 concept the idea that the revolution

Speaker 72 comes back around for the revolutionary yeah i i i i liken it to watching tiger woods swing a golf club like when tiger first came out no one was as explosive he was always the longest driver He was always hitting the clubs the furthest.

Speaker 40 He happened to also be a great putter and chipper. And he also happened to have touch and skill and creativity.

Speaker 54 And so when I watch somebody like that,

Speaker 57 watch the kids come through, hit it further and whatever, how did Tiger continue to win?

Speaker 40 Well, Tiger became even more creative.

Speaker 40 And I think that's something that I've learned from Tiger is, look, I can't rely on certain aspects of my game as I could 10 years ago when I was the only good one doing it.

Speaker 39 Now

Speaker 40 you have to be creative.

Speaker 58 How are you going to separate yourself from the kids that are learning?

Speaker 52 from you.

Speaker 54 But the one thing they'll never be able to copy is how I think.

Speaker 40 And I think that's where I really want to separate myself is that mental game side is just be like, you can throw it like me all you want, but what's going on between the ears and how I'm strategizing, I'm not going to tell anyone that.

Speaker 15 So the title that you get often

Speaker 1 given is GOAT is greatest of all time.

Speaker 79 How does the superlative that you get presented with feel?

Speaker 13 What do you find more valuable?

Speaker 1 How do you make sense of those

Speaker 29 honors

Speaker 57 the comparisons to like the tiger woods of bowling or steph curry of basketball super flattering um and I think the one parallel to all of that is bowling seems to be just next in line of the evolution of its game right like Tiger changed golf Steph is changing the way we value the three-point shot

Speaker 39 I'm changing the way you bowl

Speaker 4 There is a part of me about that legacy, right?

Speaker 40 Is when you get to a certain stature, you start thinking, right, well, how do you, if I could, how would you like to be remembered?

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 1 That's right, your elbow. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Jason. So

Speaker 46 a huge part of me wants to be remembered as the the greatest that has ever laced up the shoes and rolling a ball down the lane.

Speaker 40 There's a huge motivation for that.

Speaker 77 However, I'm really cautious to be

Speaker 40 labeled the best two-hander of all time.

Speaker 57 And so my victories in my mind is I'm chalking up more runs on the board that will separate me from just a two-handed player to, no, we're encompassing everyone that's ever rolled a ball down the lane because his stats are proving otherwise.

Speaker 40 So when I watch Steph play, I watch LeBron score the most points, I ask myself, myself, like, I wonder what their legacy that they want to be remembered for.

Speaker 49 And I promise you, Steph will be, will go down, maybe not as the goat of an all-round player, but he will be the goat of shooting the ball from the perimeter.

Speaker 56 And for me, that legacy isn't to be singular.

Speaker 20 He's the greatest at one thing.

Speaker 51 It is, I want to be the greatest at it all.

Speaker 47 Yeah. And that's not easy.

Speaker 51 And

Speaker 40 that's a wild thought.

Speaker 66 And it's also an arrogant thought to presume.

Speaker 13 I was going to say, you're like you're you're now pushing Steph Curry away with two hands.

Speaker 16 Right. You're like, not for me.

Speaker 73 I've got to let my score do the talking again.

Speaker 40 And that's a huge motivator. When I step up on the approach and I throw that strike, I'm throwing it for today, but I'm also throwing it for what is going to be said about me into the future.

Speaker 40 And I love that pressure and I love that passion and I love being in that position to influence my future based on what I'm doing today.

Speaker 66 So embrace it,

Speaker 40 enjoy it, but also know that no one will set an expectation higher than I set for myself.

Speaker 52 So whatever you're thinking of my capabilities, I'm thinking beyond it.

Speaker 40 And I'm believing I'm going to get there now.

Speaker 74 That feels like a real warning to these kids.

Speaker 51 Maybe it is.

Speaker 26 I would like you to help me, though.

Speaker 2 I would like to peer inside of your brain because I am, as I said, I am, I'm kind of like an infant when it comes to bowling.

Speaker 40 Listen, I have no problem helping out an infant.

Speaker 63 I have no problem helping out a total non-threat.

Speaker 59 If your plan was to secretly take over the game of bowling and you want to be...

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm 39, but he's still got some years left.

Speaker 12 Maybe I'd have

Speaker 4 second thoughts, but no, we can definitely fix you up here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because we're about to have the Pablo Torrey Finds Out

Speaker 2 staff

Speaker 23 bowling tournament later today.

Speaker 26 What I need to do is show everybody else.

Speaker 27 You need a trophy.

Speaker 74 That's what you need. I cannot let my staff beat me.
Yeah.

Speaker 57 How you're thinking about your staff is how I think about with my family.

Speaker 75 Like my son, he's 12 years old.

Speaker 40 He's a bowler and he always wants to bowl against me.

Speaker 65 And I will never let him win.

Speaker 40 He will always throw it in my face. And your staff are are going to do the same thing to you.

Speaker 69 That's right.

Speaker 59 You're going to yell at them for not being late, and you know what they're going to say?

Speaker 40 Oh, I got the bowling trophy.

Speaker 69 What do you say about that?

Speaker 37 The worst thing in the world for you.

Speaker 34 Help me.

Speaker 11 So, we're going to figure out what it is. Help me, Belbo.

Speaker 13 All right, let's let's let's let's get some private tutoring.

Speaker 48 I can do it. Okay,

Speaker 15 Can you show me how it's done?

Speaker 1 So, Jason Balmonde has taken his ball, his Excalibur.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 34 So, three in a row?

Speaker 67 Do you know what that's called?

Speaker 80 What's three in in a row called?

Speaker 84 I'll give you a clue. It's a bird.

Speaker 61 The flamingo.

Speaker 21 I've never seen a flamingo in real bowling life.

Speaker 76 Turkey.

Speaker 3 Just showing off.

Speaker 2 I'm noticing that his shoes have his own image on them.

Speaker 21 They say Belmo.

Speaker 19 I don't know what we're going to expect here today.

Speaker 10 Yeah, typically I'm probably drunk.

Speaker 2 The last time I played...

Speaker 55 The good news is when you're drunk, there's more pins to look at, usually.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you have 20 of them.

Speaker 16 Confidence.

Speaker 6 Helps the score.

Speaker 40 Usually the way that I like to work is I ask the player, just throw me your shot.

Speaker 49 Yeah. So I know.

Speaker 1 This is the most humiliating part potentially.

Speaker 26 I reveal

Speaker 10 what it is that I'm here

Speaker 38 to do.

Speaker 15 So we're standing in front of

Speaker 9 the bowling rack.

Speaker 17 Sure.

Speaker 63 Ball return.

Speaker 1 Very confident in all of these terms.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to select the ball.

Speaker 35 If you're small, medium, large, extra large.

Speaker 11 So what we're going to do is I believe you could probably take the green ball.

Speaker 8 Okay, that's large. You can take mine if you wanted to.
I think you could.

Speaker 2 This is not a thing that I expected to be given the pressure.

Speaker 34 Touch my ball, mate. You can touch my ball.

Speaker 9 Yo, okay, so this is very, very heavy.

Speaker 1 It says absolute power

Speaker 22 with various lightning iconography on it. Yeah.

Speaker 34 So, this is my sponsored equipment.

Speaker 2 And I'm noticing that there are two holes.

Speaker 34 Two holes? No thumb hole?

Speaker 17 No thumb. Right.

Speaker 57 And we're going to use our two middle fingers.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Like this. Perfect.

Speaker 34 So stick them in.

Speaker 23 Ring and middle.

Speaker 37 Perfect.

Speaker 62 now this hand is going to essentially cradle the ball so hold it by your waist yeah with your hand underneath it yep cradling balls that's it i kind of want you to on on stand on the side a little bit yeah and then just kind of rock it just kind of rock it and so that natural rock that you're doing right now is going to generate rotation yeah when you let it go you're actually going to hook the ball yeah if you do it like that okay go and throw a shot Let me just see what we're working with, and then we'll figure stuff out.

Speaker 34 Okay, here we go. All right.

Speaker 55 There you go. It's not bad.

Speaker 42 Okay, it's bad.

Speaker 18 All right, so it's very clear it went into the gutter.

Speaker 8 Yeah, okay, it's bad. It was not bad for like

Speaker 88 until it was bad.

Speaker 2 I'm getting flashbacks to various things in my life that have involved a lot of this vocabulary, but yeah.

Speaker 79 When was the last time that specific ball has ever touched a gutter?

Speaker 76 It's been a while. Yeah.

Speaker 40 It's been a little while.

Speaker 23 How deep should my fingers be in these holes?

Speaker 64 Well, your fingers and my fingers are different size.

Speaker 66 So so the holes this is designed for me yeah I can't remember the last time someone stuck their fingers in my ball so this is a privilege yeah and it's very uncomfortable for me I'm gonna I'm gonna be gentle okay thank you okay please yeah okay so stick them in yeah gently they're in there for the for the podcast audience now they're in there All right, try it again.

Speaker 50 Don't have to throw it too hard.

Speaker 34 Just kind of roll it through there.

Speaker 67 Be gentle with it.

Speaker 72 Okay.

Speaker 64 Little outside, outside, a little, but we have,

Speaker 71 we have an improvement.

Speaker 88 There's always a moment where it's just like, I get it.

Speaker 67 Oh, that's what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 53 That's how it's supposed to feel.

Speaker 84 And when you hit that moment, there's usually a euphoric feeling of, let me do it again.

Speaker 55 Let me do it again.

Speaker 62 So I don't know when that moment is going to happen for you.

Speaker 80 I just want to hear.

Speaker 49 We may not have enough tape. in the cameras.

Speaker 21 For that reason, I told them to bring more tape.

Speaker 1 And when that day happened, you better text me and you better say, When that year comes to pass, call me in Australia, in orange Australia.

Speaker 19 I'll be on my deathbed 60 years from now, and my phone will vibrate and it'll be like, Pablo, what?

Speaker 65 Oh, he did it.

Speaker 74 Oh, and it's just going to be me rapping your strike song.

Speaker 42 All right, try it again.

Speaker 40 Here we go.

Speaker 2 Here we go.

Speaker 59 Oh my god, that's going to be really close to like seven.

Speaker 55 All right, we've got seven.

Speaker 55 All right, look at that!

Speaker 12 Three now seven.

Speaker 80 Our increments are going above what

Speaker 21 I just want to be clear for the audio audience that what I'm feeling right now

Speaker 28 is a power unlike any I've ever felt.

Speaker 8 What have I created?

Speaker 22 I've been emboldened.

Speaker 88 That's really, really close.

Speaker 67 Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Speaker 55 Yo!

Speaker 63 That's a spare!

Speaker 55 Good.

Speaker 64 That's the second best thing you can get!

Speaker 12 When I tell you

Speaker 61 that I'm going to fing destroy the Pablo Torre Finds Out staff tonight,

Speaker 8 I f ⁇ ing mean it.

Speaker 55 I have no doubt anything is possible!

Speaker 1 So I should just check back in here with a quick post script about what it is that I found out today at the Pablo Torre Finds Out bowling tournament.

Speaker 11 I didn't win.

Speaker 35 My staff's good somehow at bowling.

Speaker 28 Cortez is somehow good at bowling. How is he good at any of this?

Speaker 1 Nooch is like a pro basically.

Speaker 1 I went two-handed the whole time as per my tutelage from the greatest bowler of all time and I

Speaker 32 was not part of the revolution.

Speaker 1 You don't need to check the scores.

Speaker 26 Like, just though,

Speaker 13 I don't need to dwell on it.

Speaker 33 I didn't win.

Speaker 1 Didn't go well.

Speaker 37 Like, what the f?

Speaker 1 What I found out today is actually that I find myself relating at the end here to Belmo's fellow Australian in a cruel bit of irony, Ben Simmons. Didn't come through in the clutch.

Speaker 35 I should just be man enough to admit that.

Speaker 17 Hello, this is hard. It's supposed to be hard, right?

Speaker 31 Like, maybe, maybe

Speaker 31 the real bowling title is the friends,

Speaker 1 the friends we made along the way. Now, the journalism we did.

Speaker 29 But no more questions.

Speaker 2 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

Speaker 13 And I'll talk to you next time.

Speaker 13 tick.