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

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Because I have a condition.

Singular chirophobia.

The fear of using one hand.

Right after this ad.

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

Bro, you know how I feel about Ben Simmons.

I've said some things off the record about Ben Simmons that actually

I think are actually,

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

That are actually true, potentially.

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

He came back

just weeks ago after being away.

And you and many people are already shiting all over his existence.

He's an embarrassment, and I don't know why he's still doing this to him.

Himself.

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

Just go enjoy your millions of dollars and watch Love is Blind.

Like, why are you continuing to embarrass yourself?

You want him to just give up?

Bro, just enjoy

the spoils that you created.

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.

Yeah, which sounds awesome until he's like, oh, you shoot the ball, bro.

And then what does he look like?

That's the stereo.

A camera or something.

Like, enough.

That's the stereo.

So look, I actually agree with you on this level.

He needs to do something different.

about his shot.

And many people have been saying this to him.

And he does refuse to change.

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.

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

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

Help out Ben Simmons.

He misses again.

He's missed five consecutive free throws now.

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.

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.

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

89%.

Because he did what?

He shot granny style with two hands.

Like, and Rick Berry's been saying this forever.

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

I like to bounce the ball, my arms hang down, my knees are bent, relaxed, cock the wrists, bottle through.

So do that.

The thing is, as embarrassing as that looks, it's not as embarrassing as what Ben Simmons is doing because the ball is going in the net.

Like 89% of the time.

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

yeah, he's...

This is bad.

What's the number?

Go ahead.

Yeah, sub 60%.

59%.

Career.

Bro, bro, I'm not even kidding you.

I could do better than that.

Sub 50%.

No one's guarding him at the free throw line.

You understand that?

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

Pathetic.

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

No, it's pathetic.

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.

Because watch this, Cortez.

Look at this.

So So this is Korean basketball.

And these guys are deliberately shooting bank shots

at the free throw line.

And 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%

doing this.

It's working.

Clearly.

It's ironic, right?

You don't want to be humiliated.

And so you do something repeatedly over and over again 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.

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.

And he's trying something different, right?

And so to me, sports history is full of these things.

Sports is such a great 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.

Who?

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.

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.

Went back to the scissors and I changed it.

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 today it's universal.

I saw you.

I saw you.

He saw me what?

Very, very

obviously grinning as soon as he said I was scissoring.

But he changed it to the point where he now moves his center of gravity because he's going backwards headfirst over the bar.

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.

Did you just burp?

I cleared my throat.

If you wanted me to burp, I'll burp into the microphone.

I don't want you to.

Okay, very good.

What I wanted to do, speaking of looking stupid,

is find the foremost example as an inspiration potentially for Ben Simmons, for a guy who did exactly this, right?

A more modern example because they decided to look dumb,

got better and changed everything.

And so

I had to go bowling.

Really?

That's right.

You probably suck at bowling.

Not anymore.

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Please drink responsibly.

We are sitting here at a bowling alley.

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?

Do I call you Belma?

What should I be doing here?

It don't matter.

I'm good with interviewing.

Yeah.

So I just want to even further simplify it.

You're the two-hander.

I'm the two-hander.

I bowl with two hands.

When you mentioned two-handedness, you sort of imagine Rick Berry in my mind, like granny style, like underhand, like doesn't look quite, yeah, it doesn't quite look like that.

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.

And what I can tell you is that the dude's like 5'10.

40 years old, dark hair, light beard.

We talked about our kids for a little bit.

He's just this deeply unthreatening and unassuming looking dad.

Unless, of course, you are a professional bowler.

In which case, the man is a revolutionary.

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.

This is basically the first law of bowling biomechanics.

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.

Denny, and that's what we'd like to share with our players today.

One, the biomechanical movements to the foul line, the movements of the body.

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

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.

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.

Here's the top seat.

His first battle.

Looks good.

Not sure I expected anything different.

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.

The action is from the side of the body.

It's not from between the legs.

And so you've got this

athletic kind of approach.

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

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

where bowling is more like golf, right?

Where you can see an athletic swing.

And so the game has changed.

It is more athletic now than it ever was.

And so my parents built a bowling center when I was born.

In Australia.

In Australia, a small little country town.

They'd never bowled a ball in their life.

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

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

They didn't inherit the traditions of bowling.

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

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

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

They were quite heavy.

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

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.

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

bowling traditionally didn't feel like me.

And so

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

Like you can bowl like everyone else.

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

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

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

the Australian 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 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 throw one properly, please?

So I'm thinking, like, maybe they want more strikes.

Like, I got to get a strike.

So I throw a ball, I get a strike.

I'm quite proud of myself.

And they tie me out.

They go, okay, listen,

we don't know what you're doing here.

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

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

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

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

a true bowling authority.

Right, the actual institution of the game.

The actual institution of the game ripped me apart.

They wouldn't help me.

The kids wouldn't bowl with me.

And it was just this very alone feeling.

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

And I won the tournament.

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

I decline

the prize.

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

Jason Belmonte.

Seven in a row.

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.

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

Always.

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

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

You can look at it from that lens when you, when you look back at it.

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

my decisions today.

are going to have

this kind of an impact down the road.

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

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

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,

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?

Right.

I don't know.

Right.

And so there are so many things, which is a slide indoors, right?

It's the butterfly effect.

It's like, I couldn't have written this script any better.

Well, that's how you get it.

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

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

I would probably suck.

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.

You're supposed to bowl like me, traditionally.

You'd be the bully.

You'd be one of the bullies.

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

Jason Couch, your take on two-handed bowling?

I think it's a travesty that it's in this sport.

I'm old school.

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.

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

Okay?

So

anytime someone begins to say that.

Hold on.

All right.

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

And this is the home of bowling.

This is, you know, the American idea of bowling is rooted in pop culture.

Yes.

It is important to America.

I get it.

The Big Lebowski bowling ties the whole room that is America together.

That rug really tied the room together, did it not?

Fing A.

This guy peed on it.

Donnie, please.

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

I bowl differently.

I knew I was going to ruffle feathers, but...

I didn't realize it was going to be that much.

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 going to have to do this all over again.

The biggest difference is Americans allowed.

I would come back after a tournament going like, fuck, this is, this is a hard day because, you know, I'm getting heckled.

No one else is getting heckled.

I'm getting heckled from the crowd.

And I haven't experienced that type of heckling.

You know, it is go back to your country.

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

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

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

And I, I had to fight through that.

And that was, that was hard.

I apologize for smiling through your trauma.

I do too.

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

And for me, bowling was like my second home.

It was a place I love 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.

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

I just beat you.

So, whatever you're saying right now,

it's even harder to convince me you're right because

I'm not just beating you by one or two pins, like I am smashing

you guys.

Now, what?

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

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

Jason Belmonte earns his first PBA major

sports often feels like it has antibodies

that are rejecting foreign invaders.

And you were a foreign invader, and maybe the way that was just expressed, if I'm getting your story right, is that looks f ⁇ ing stupid.

Yeah.

And that's the antibody.

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

Okay.

So that's the traditional.

That's any sport.

Yes.

That's not how I grew up with it.

This is not how I was taught it.

And therefore, this new way of doing it doesn't compute.

I would like to read you,

Jason, a quote because it was the Players Championship.

It was 2012.

There's a TV interview before the final.

And your opponent, a gentleman named Mike Devaney,

he said this.

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.

Everybody should throw it.

So I'm going to show him what's up right now.

Thanks, Mike.

Good luck.

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.

Mike Devaney needs a double and seven.

Anything less

Jason Belmonte wins for the third time

at this year's World Series of Bowling

and Belmo wins it.

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.

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.

Brian Voss.

Why?

What made you cancerous to Brian Voss?

I'm going to defend him a little bit.

Okay.

I don't think

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

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

And you can't deny that Brian had

an extreme passion for the game.

And he wanted to protect it how he thought was best.

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

It was the two-handed backhand in tennis.

It was the Frosby flop in high jump.

Yeah.

Big Fosbury.

This was his version of all of those things.

and he didn't like it he he was scared for the game that he grew up with the game that he loved i think what saddened me at the time was this was one of the greatest players in our history someone who i revered and someone who i competed against someone who i had drinks with he's actively trying to say that we cannot let this

technique, your craft, your approach,

destroy the game.

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

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

So

the word cheat hits me hardest because

my understanding of the word cheat is you know

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

You are cheating the game.

I am within the rules.

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

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 you're suggesting that I will purposely go beyond the rules.

So what I'm doing, it breaks that mold.

And to them, it hurts them.

And I have to accept that.

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

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

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

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

He has a record-tying seven Player 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,

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

The best bowler on the planet steps up.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

But what Belmo does have somehow, which very few, even NBA players have, is a song that someone wrote

about him.

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

about Belmo's life.

Kev's a great young kid, super talented bowler, also a really talented musician and loves to rap.

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

We should write a song.

And maybe I can play it as like my strike song on the, on the PBA show.

And so we did.

We found a beat.

He thought up for some lyrics.

And I, the only direction I gave him is I said, write about me from like your perspective.

Which means that every time you bowl a strike.

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

Yeah.

But let me ask about why it is that your response, like in modern times, now we're catching up to the present,

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 and

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

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

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

I don't mind trolling the trolls back.

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

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

fake

neurological disease.

Because I have a condition.

Singular chirophobia.

the fear of using one hand.

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.

I'm afraid he was born with it.

You know, there's no cure.

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

I have this problem.

Everything in my life I do with two hands.

You know, even using, you know, cutlery.

I can't just butter bread.

You know, it's a process.

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

So I'm having a laugh about it.

And in my mind, I released this video.

It looks obvious.

I'm having a laugh.

Turns out not everyone thought I was joking.

And so I had this flood.

of people saying, oh my God, I am so sorry.

I've been hating on you for so long.

And now I realize it's not your fault.

You were born this way and there's nothing you can do about it.

How you go through your life.

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

Because

you could go two ways.

You can come clean or fundraise off of this.

And my fear was, is these people now, like they're saying they love me where they 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 you now have to perpetually argue that this is real.

I end up shooting another video

in which

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.

You

gotta chew it up.

Are there a side effects that I should?

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

Doctor,

thank you so much.

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

Godspeed.

You are such a troll.

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

So this leads to this

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.

They didn't change their sports.

Your problem now seems to be that

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.

Yeah.

I don't often get

like emotional.

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.

And sometimes there's a lot of trauma in this kid's life and he uses bowling as a way to escape it or to bring joy.

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

Then you pan out and you see

hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Now is it really that many now?

Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more.

The last, it is more.

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.

And so that number is growing exponentially quicker as well.

And so you hear these stories, then you go to a bowling center and you see the impact with your own eyes.

Where when I was a kid, there was me,

no one else.

to now as a 40 year old guy walking into a bowling center and it's everywhere.

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

man, that

that's one of those like me moments.

Like, that's like a whole

with two hands.

Yes.

Lead seven.

One big shot for Kyle Trup.

One big event.

He wins the 2023 2023 PBA Tour.

From Gothenburg, Sweden, Jesper Senson.

Yep.

Needs three.

Gets all ten.

Give him number nine.

Let's meet Anthony Simons.

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.

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

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

Some of these kids are really good.

Super good.

And they're coming for you.

Like they're actively

like

coming for the titles, the trophies.

I mean, you, is it 15 major titles that you've won?

That's more than anyone else in history.

Seven player of the year awards.

That's tied for the most all time.

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

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

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

You've seen the full circle of start by being

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.

What does that feel like?

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

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

I'm pissed.

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, we both the same.

No, I'm still pissed.

The thing.

That I'm realizing now and why these kids are so good is because

of what I've been able to do and they've been able to put me up as a pin on the pin board

to study and I never had that.

My son today can YouTube everything.

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.

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

Yeah as you mentioned you were right Mike it's I was walking in blind

How do I fix my swing?

I don't know.

I guess I'm just gonna have to go to the bowl and for a week every day I'm gonna have to try new things now someone takes my game pulls it apart and says are you having problems with this?

This is what Belmo does.

How about you use this kind of technique in your swing and it fixes them and then I have to combat watching the kids on tour go, hey,

that looks a little bit like me.

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

I think I've been doing that for a while, and it's the ultimate compliment,

but it's also like, could you not have come like five years later?

Like, let me, let me have retired.

I'm still here.

Let me have retired.

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

It's kind of an amazing

concept, the idea that the revolution

comes back around for the revolutionary.

Yeah.

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.

He happened to also be a great putter and chipper.

And he also happened to have touch and skill and creativity.

And so when I watched somebody like that

watch the kids come through, hit it further and whatever.

How did Tiger continue to win?

Well, Tiger became even more creative.

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.

Now

you have to be creative.

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

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

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 years and how I'm strategizing, I'm not going to tell anyone that.

So the title that you get often

given is GOAT is greatest of all time.

How does the superlative that you get presented with feel?

What do you find more valuable?

How do you make sense of those

honors?

The comparisons to like the Tiger Woods of bowling or Steph Curry of basketball, super flattering.

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.

I'm changing the way you bowl.

There is a part of me about that legacy.

Right.

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?

Yes.

That's right, your Obid.

Yeah.

Jason.

So

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

There's a huge motivation for that.

However, I'm really cautious to be

labeled the best two-hander of all time.

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 the ball down the lane because his stats are proven otherwise.

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

And I promise you, Steph 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.

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

He's the greatest at one thing.

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

And that's not easy.

And that's it.

That's a wild,

that's a wild thought.

And it's also an arrogant thought to presume to be a good idea.

I was going to say, you're like,

you're not pushing Steph Curry away with two hands.

Right.

You're like, not, not for me.

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

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.

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.

So embrace it, enjoy it, but also know that.

No one will set an expectation higher than I set for myself.

So whatever you're thinking of my capabilities, I'm thinking beyond it and I'm believing I'm going to get there now.

That feels like a real warning to these kids.

Maybe it is.

I would like you to help me though.

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.

Listen, I have no problem helping out.

an infant.

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

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

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

Maybe I'd have

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

Yeah, because we're about to have the Pablo Tori finds out

staff

bowling

tournament later today.

What I need to do is show everybody else.

You need a trophy.

That's what you need.

I cannot let my staff beat me.

Yeah.

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

Like my son, he's 12 years old.

He's a bowler.

And he always wants to bowl against me.

And I will never let him win.

He will always throw it in my face.

And your staff are going to do the same thing to you.

That's right.

You're going to yell at them for not being late.

And you know what?

They're going to say, oh, I got the bowling trophy.

What do you say about that?

It's going to be

the worst thing in the world for you.

Help me.

So we're gonna fix it.

Help me, Belbo.

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

I can do it.

Okay

Can you show me how it's done?

So Jason Balmonte has taken his ball, his Excalibur

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Three in a row?

Do you know what that's called?

What's three in a row called?

I'll give you a clue.

It's a bird.

The flamingo.

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

Turkey.

Just showing off.

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

They say Belmo.

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

Yeah.

Typically, I'm probably drunk.

The last time I played.

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

Yeah.

You have 20 of them.

Confidence.

Helps the score.

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

Yeah.

So I know.

This is the most humiliating part potentially.

I reveal

what it is that I'm here

to do.

So we're standing in front of

the bowling rack.

Sure.

Ball return.

Very confident in all of these terms.

So I'm going to select the ball.

If you're a bad.

Small, medium, large, extra large.

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

Okay, that's a large ball.

You can take mine if you wanted to.

I think you could take it.

This is not a thing that I expected to be given the previous.

You can touch my ball, mate.

You can touch my ball.

Yo, okay, so this is very, very heavy it says absolute power that's the name of the power with various lightning uh iconography on it yeah so that this is my sponsored equipment and i'm noticing that there are two holes two holes no thumb hole no thumb right and we're going to use our two middle fingers yeah like this perfect so stick them in ring and middle and

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 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.

When you let it go, you're actually going to hook the ball 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.

Okay, here we go.

All right.

There you go.

It's not bad.

Okay, it's bad.

All right.

So it's very clear it went into the gutter.

Yeah, okay, it's bad.

It was not bad for like until it was bad.

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

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

It's been a while.

Yeah.

It's been a little while.

How deep should my fingers be in these holes?

Well, your fingers and my fingers are different size.

So the holes, this is designed for me.

Yeah.

I can't remember the last time someone stuck their fingers in my ball.

This is a privilege?

Yeah, and it's very uncomfortable for for me.

I'm going to be gentle.

Okay, thank you.

Please.

Yeah.

Okay.

So stick them in.

Yeah.

Gently.

They're in there.

For the podcast audience.

They're in there.

All right, try it again.

Don't have to throw it too hard.

Just kind of roll it through there.

Be gentle with them.

Okay.

Little outside, a little, but we have.

We have an improvement.

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

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

That's how it's supposed to feel.

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

Let me do it again.

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

I just want to hear.

We may not have enough tape in the cameras.

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

More tape.

And when that day happened, you better text me.

When that year comes to pass, call me in Australia, in orange Australia.

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

Oh, he did it.

Oh, he did.

And it's just going to be me rapping your strike song.

Alright, try it again.

Try it again.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Oh, my God.

That's going to be really close to like seven.

All right, we've got seven.

All right, look at that.

Three.

Now seven.

Our increments are going above our expectations.

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

is a power unlike any I've ever felt.

What have I created?

I've been emboldened.

That's really, really close.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Yo!

That's a spare.

Good.

That's the second best thing you can get.

When I tell you

that I'm going to fing destroy the Pablo Torre finds out staff tonight,

I can mean it.

I have no doubt.

Anything is possible.

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.

I didn't win.

My staff's good somehow at bowling.

Cortez is somehow good at bowling.

How is he good at any of this?

Nooch is like a pro, basically.

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

was not part of the revolution

you don't need to check the scores like just though i you know don't don't need to dwell on it um i i didn't win didn't go didn't go well

like what the f

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.

I should just be man enough to admit that.

Hello, this is hard.

It's supposed to be hard, right?

Like, maybe, maybe

the real bowling title is

the friends we made along the way.

Now, the journalism we did.

But no more questions.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.