WATERLOO, Iowa – Caitlyn Johnson of Beaumont, Texas, has never particularly enjoyed tournaments with a very high scoring pace as she feels she’s at her best when scores are low and she’s able to grind out steady games by controlling the pocket and making spares.
Well, the scoring pace was high at Cadillac Xtreme Bowling Center on Friday, and if the performance Johnson authored wasn’t her best, then the opposition better watch out.
That’s because Johnson looked fairly dominant during Friday’s 12 games of qualifying at the Professional Women’s Bowling Association Pepsi Open, recording a pair of 300 games en route to a 2,928 total (a 244 average) that allowed her to grab first place in the field of more than 80 competitors.
The 24-year-old right-hander broke 230 eight times (248, 248, 236, 300, 259, 300, 238 and 245) in 12 games during qualifying with her lowest score of the day coming in Game 12 when she fired a 205.
Johnson was reasonably certain scores would be high when competition got underway at the Pepsi Open, but she didn’t necessarily expect hers to be the highest.
“Usually, the flatter the pattern, the better it is for me, so it’s kind of shocking that I say that after I just led on a very high scoring day like today,” Johnson said. “That’s never happened before. Also, I’d never shot two 300s in one day before, and I hadn’t shot a PWBA 300, so that’s another first, times two.”
Johnson was not, however, the only bowler to achieve perfection on Friday.
Latvia’s Diana Zavjalova, who won the PWBA Waterloo Open on Thursday night to claim her fifth career PWBA Tour title, was perfect during the first game of Round 2, while Colombia’s Clara Guerrero connected for 12 strikes in a row during Game 4 of the second round.
England’s Verity Crawley didn’t shoot 300 on Friday, but she started two of her final three games with 10 strikes in a row, which allowed her to come in with scores of 289, 234 and 287 to record an 810 series (a 270 average) to close out qualifying.
Crawley finished the night in third place with a 12-game total of 2,837, which put her 27 pins behind the 2,864 recorded by second-place qualifier Birgit Noreiks of Germany.
Jillian Martin of Stow, Ohio (2,810), and Jordan Richard of Tipton, Michigan (2,805), grabbed the final two spots in the top five – Both Martin and Richard took part in Thursday night’s Waterloo Open stepladder finals with Richard finishing third while Martin claimed fourth.
Colombia’s Juliana Botero finished 12th during Friday night’s Pepsi Open qualifying and was the final bowler to make the cut to match play. Botero finished with a mark of 2,769 (a 230.75 average).
Botero and the other 11 match-play qualifiers will bowl a pair of six-game round-robin blocks starting Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern. Total pinfall, including bonus pins for wins in match play, will determine the five finalists for Saturday night’s stepladder finals.
All rounds of competition at the Pepsi Open will be broadcast live at BowlTV.com. The stepladder will air at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, and the champion will take home $10,000.
Johnson would certainly love to be the one holding that check come Saturday night; however, to do so would put her in uncharted waters as a 10th-place effort is Johnson’s best PWBA Tour finish to date.
Nevertheless, Friday’s performance proved that she has more than enough firepower to be competitive on bowling’s biggest stage, so she’ll be looking to keep the momentum going come Saturday morning.
“There’s at least 12 more games coming tomorrow, so I need to keep sticking to the process like I did today,” Johnson said. “The only time I got a little flustered was when I was in the 10th frame of that first 300. I got so nervous there that my knees were shaking, and I was freaking out. After that though, I went back to being cool, calm and collected, and that’s how I’ll need to be again tomorrow.”
Had Johnson become a PWBA Tour member prior to the start of the Pepsi Open, then a winning performance on Saturday would have earned her the right to bowl in the final event of PWBA Championship Week – Waterloo, which is the 2023 PWBA Tour Championship.
However, Johnson, who is competing as a non-member this week, would likely have had to decline that opportunity even if it arose as her full-time job as a bowling center general manager would not have allowed her to remain in Waterloo long enough to participate.
PWBA Championship Week - Waterloo includes the recently-completed PWBA Waterloo Open, the PWBA Pepsi Open and the PWBA Tour Championship, which is the final major of the 2023 PWBA Tour season.
The Pepsi Open will wrap up on Saturday night, and the Tour Championship will be contested Sunday through Tuesday.
In order to qualify for the Tour Championship, a player must be a current PWBA member in good standing and have won a National Tour title during the 2023 season. The remainder of the field will be filled from the PWBA season points list through the most recent tournament preceding the Tour Championship, which will be the Pepsi Open.
All Tour Championship competitors will be seeded into the round-robin match play schedule according to their position on the season points list after the Pepsi Open.
Those 24 players will bowl three eight-game rounds of round-robin match play starting Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern. Additional eight-game blocks of matches will be contested on Monday at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern to determine the top five for the stepladder finals.
The stepladder finals will start at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and determine which player wins the 2023 PWBA Tour Championship and its $50,000 first-place prize. The finals will be broadcast live on CBS Sports Network.
All rounds leading up to the CBS Sports Network broadcast will be livestreamed at BowlTV.com.
