Finnishing them off: Mika Koivuniemi, the PBA's star from Finland, has plenty to smile about after his convincing victory in the U.S. Open - bowling

TWO-THIRDS OF FINLAND, A small nation on the northern tip of Europe, is covered by trees, so it was inevitable that at least one of its citizens should excel at knocking down wood. No one should have been surprised, therefore, when shortly before Christmas a tall, bearded Finn came to the U.S. Open with a knack for splattering bowling pins.

His name, barely pronounceable by Americans, was Mika Koivuniemi (KOI-oove-neh-mi), and it's possible that in time some version of it will come to bowlers as easily as Parker Bohn III or Don Carter. In a week-long grind in Fountain Valley, Calif., Koivuniemi took charge during the PBA's familiar round robin of match play, seized the No. 1 spot for the televised finals, and won going away.

As an ESPN Sunday attraction, the finals lacked drama. Each of the three matches had one superstar well in control of another halfway through. Five-time PBA Player of the Year Walter Ray Williams Jr. racked surprise finalist Mike DeVaney, 223-189. Patrick Healey then scored a 279-209 victory over Williams, with Healey eventually succumbing to Koivuniemi, 247-182.

Koivuniemi earned $100,000 for his week's work. Healey smiled through his grief as he was handed a check for $50,000. Hey, this revived PBA isn't chintzy.

Williams, who'd rather be tossing horse-shoes against the world's best if he had his druthers, received $25,000, and that ain't hay. For DeVaney, a stocky guy who was able to jump high enough to click his heels at the end, went home to nearby Escondido with one of his biggest prizes ever, $15,000.

The name Koivuniemi first confronted unilingual Americans--"Hey, Koovenemy, nice shot!"--in the American Bowling Congress Masters in the spring of 2000, where he emerged from the basic two-losses-and-out event as the champion. There have been bowlers who won the Masters and never were heard from again, however, so in the eyes of some, the soft-spoken Finn still had to prove himself. Did he ever!

Mika watched without any sign of emotion as Healey, his friend and frequent roommate when the two made good money on the "amateur" circuit, rolled nine consecutive strikes in eliminating Williams.

While the ESPN production was showing commercials, Koivuniemi warmed up. Healey stayed loose by throwing some shots on the championship pair, and occasionally using an adjoining lane, in order to stay out of Mika's way. Koivuniemi had come a long way from Helsinki.

"My mom bowled, so I went with her," he says. "I liked all kinds of games--soccer, basketball, hockey. When I was 11, I asked Mom if she'd teach me how to bowl. I liked it, but not much more than other sports at first. There were no bowling coaches in Finland, so it was hard to get better.

"When I was 15, I won the national miniature golf championship in my age division. By then, though, I had learned enough by watching other bowlers that I improved. I dropped other sports by 16. I was averaging 200 a couple of years later."

As Koivuniemi continued to loosen up for his $100,000 game, he began lofting the ball four or five feet out onto the lane, a habit he developed as a youngster. "I grew up using a long loft," he says. "It works here."

The match began with several hundred fans packed into the seats on three sides of the lanes, an arrangement made possible by the portable stadium the PBA created and which it transports to each tournament site. All of the seats for the Sunday spectacle had been sold by the previous Tuesday.

Koivuniemi buffed his opening shot for a strike and sat down. Healey left the 24-5-8, the spare, but then went high and got a 6-7-10 split that he couldn't convert. Mika struck and spared for an early 20-pin lead.

Healey looked like he'd make a game of it when he struck in the 3rd and 4th frames, but Koivuniemi rolled the first of five consecutive strikes in frame No. 4 and Healey couldn't stay with him. Koivuniemi had a miss in the 9th, but it was all over by then.

Koivuniemi chatted with announcers Jim Kelly and Randy Pedersen as he accepted a couch-sized check on TV, and the show was over. Koivuniemi had become the first foreign-born champion of bowling's U.S. Open. (In the media room afterward, PBA tournament manager Kirk Von Krueger handed Koivuniemi his actual check. Mika jokingly commented on how the prize had diminished not only in size, but also in amount--federal taxes had been deducted.)

Koivuniemi took a few minutes after the match to phone his wife of 10 years, Leena, in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the couple have bought a home. Mrs. Koivuniemi had watched the final on TV with their two daughters, Ida, 8, and Lidia, 6. "My wife rarely gets to see me bowl," Mika says, "because she has to look after our girls."

Reporters anxious to learn more about the relative newcomer peppered him with a variety of questions.

Was this as surprising as the Masters?

"I wasn't surprised at the Masters," Koivuniemi replied, in a calm but not arrogant way. "I think I can win every tournament I enter. That isn't realistic, of course, but I have to think that way."

What will you do with the $100,000?

"I will pay off some bills," said Koivuniemi, grinning. "This morning Pat [Healey] asked if he could borrow $5. I only had $16 in my pocket, but I loaned him the five. We both needed to win today."

Does the amount you won--even after taxes--kind of blow your mind?

"No. I've won $100,000 before. In a match-play event of the Hoinke Tournament in Cincinnati in 1997. I had to defeat 11 consecutive opponents in one-game matches to win."

Did you have a plan that you thought might work in this tournament?

"Yes," Koivuniemi said, hesitantly. "On the first day of qualifying, I was trying to make too many things happen. I decided to stay out of trouble, shoot my 210s and 220s, if I could, and see if they'd hold up."

Although you don't show any emotion during a game, you usually loosen up afterward, even if you lose, and seem to kid around with your opponent.

"Yes, I concentrate on my game very hard," said the man from the cold north.

"But it can take three and a half hours to bowl an eight-game block. You can't be fight for that long. I have known most of the men I bowl against for years, so we talk when the game is over. You can get too loose, of course."

Next, a weary Healey arrived, studying his battered right hand. His heavily callused forefinger and the back of his thumb were red and swollen, and there was a nasty cut on his palm, near the thumb. Shreds of NuSkin clung here and there, adding to the gory scene.

"Pat," said a reporter, "the once-a-week bowler is going to have trouble figuring out how a veteran pro can shoot 279 and then just a few minutes later, on the same pair of lanes, shoot 182."

Healey shook his head, equally puzzled. "On my first practice ball before the final match I experimented by moving two boards to the right. The ball sailed into the pocket and blew away the pins. Even when I was throwing strikes against Walter Ray, I suspected that the lanes were changing, and that shot seemed to confirm my thinking.

"I don't know if I had unintentionally increased my speed on that first shot or not, but it led to trouble. The ball didn't come into the pocket in the first frame and I left the bucket, so I guess I overcorrected on the next shot and left the 4-7-10. The strikes in the next two frames were encouraging, but then I left a 5-pin, and after that I was lost. A game can get away pretty fast, especially if your opponent is striking."

The 31-year-old, who lists Mexico City as his home, has won and lost a lot of matches over the years. The $50,000 runner-up prize was more than one-third of his PBA career earnings before the U.S. Open.

A surprising number of PBA superstars were not among the 32 players who cashed at Fountain Bowl. Pete Weber, No. 4 on the season's prize list with two fall championships, finished tied for 44th, one spot behind Mike Aulby. Chris Barnes, a winner in October, was 37th, and another recent champion, Danny Wiseman, was 61st.

The U.S. Open winner in 2001, Robert Smith, qualified for match play but then went 3-13 and took 28th place. Smith had charged into the No. 5 position with an eight-game "aerial" display Thursday night, firing the ball 15 to 18 feet out onto the lane. Spectators who hadn't seen Smith's tactic before assumed the ball had hung up on his thumb, but then they watched in fascination as it careened into the pocket. In his final game Thursday, he fired seven strikes in succession for a 247.

"I always use an extreme loft in the night block in PBA tournaments," Smith explains. "The lanes hook a lot more at night, and I figure the ball can't start hooking if it's in the air."

Smith employed a more conventional delivery the next morning, however, and sank in the standings with a 1-7 record in match play. His high-loft game didn't work that night and he went 2-6. The defending champion finished 28th.

DeVaney, who finished in fourth after his defeat in the opening TV match, wasn't even listed in the PBA media guide. The Escondido, Calif., righthander is a regular in the PBA's West Coast regional tournaments, however, and has won three of them. He bowled a 279 in the position round Saturday night to jump from seventh place to No. 4 and earn a spot in the TV show.

After losing to Williams, DeVaney hung around to watch the Healey-Williams encounter and the championship match between Koivuniemi, a Finn who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., and his friend Healey, a U.S. citizen who lives in Mexico. Bowling is a small world after all.

Peters: The PBA Is Pushing Forward

"IT'S MIDNIGHT. SEEMS LIKE there was a PBA tournament final being shown live from somewhere at 12--was it Tokyo or Thailand? Well, I'll flip on the computer and find out ..."

That's the way it may be before long. When the three wise men from Microsoft bought the near-bankrupt PBA in 2000, there was some talk about "making greater use of the Internet" but few clues about what the new owners had in mind. In an interview at bowling's U.S. Open with one of the investors, Chris Peters, and PBA president Steve Miller, bowling-via-computer was among the possibilities mentioned.

"It's complicated, of course, and it may take more time to get it set up," Peters says, "but so much of our potential audience is worldwide, particularly in northern Europe and the Near East, that we feel it's worth pursuing.

"Watching live bowling on your computer would probably be on a pay-perview basis, part of a package that would include other sports. Neither I nor my partners, Mike Slade and Rob Glaser, are experienced in sports marketing. That's why we hired Steve Miller, who's been there."

Midway through the redesigned PBA's first season--10 tournaments in the fall and 10 in the spring, all shown live on ESPN--Peters says that the owners are pleased with the organization's progress.

"The number of people visiting our Web site is up 20% over the previous year," he says. "Tournament attendance is up 50%, and PBA membership has jumped 50%. The shows' Nielsen ratings, about 1.5, represent a 30% increase, and we're outdrawing the NHL, among others.

"We knew when we got into this that it would take three to five years to turn it around, and that there was a risk involved. Purchasing the PBA is not like buying Treasury bills."

Peters, a boyish-looking 43, hung around the media room or sat in the bleachers watching the bowling throughout the U.S. Open. He is obviously a PBA fan, but contrary to numerous press reports, he never intended to be a pro bowler.

"That story sprouted from somebody's imagination," he says. "I've bowled for fun, and I often watched Chris Schenkel describing the matches on TV, but that's as close as I had ever been. The three of us decided to buy the PBA and turn it into a for-profit organization after a lot of thought."

Peters is cautious about detailing whatever other changes might be in store for the PBA.

"I've learned that in business it's not smart to announce things until they are ready to go," he says. "We might have a plan that appears to be all set, yet change our mind 10 times before the final version is ready. Besides, Steve Miller is in charge now. I'm only involved in the bowling a little bit."

Miller, a husky 58-year-old who has two master's degrees and once played football for the Detroit Lions, shakes his head and smiles.

"Chris is being modest," the PBA president and CEO insists. "His work is vital to the success we've had so far."

Miller is best known among sports people for having been the athletic director at Kansas State University for 10 years, mostly in the '80s when the Wildcats' football team turned from a perennial weak sister in the Big Eight Conference to one of the nation's top-ranked clubs.

"K-State was willing to make the investment and it paid off," Miller explains. "After that, I went with Nike as director of global sports marketing for nearly 10 years. Then I was contacted by the PBA people and here I am, despite the fact that I've never bowled.

"I used to watch the PBA tournaments on Saturday afternoons, though, when they were one of the highest-rated sports shows on TV for more than 30 years. But there is more competition now, and bowling didn't keep up. The world changed, but the TV shows remained static, and the result was bankruptcy.

"I brought along Ian Hamilton, who had worked with me at Nike, and we planned some changes. Bowling has a loyal following, and that's good, but we have to expand that base. Advertisers want to put their money in events that target their audience. Surveys show we are slowly improving the demographics--age, economic level, etc.--of our viewers."

Miller lists four of the changes made toward attracting new viewers:

"One, we've gotten away from total pins in determining the TV finalists and put more emphasis on match play. The best three-games-out-of-five matches provide more excitement for spectators because the losers in these matches are eliminated.

"Two, we've made the TV more lively by providing an arena setting for every show. We transport a three-lane stadium to every tournament site and put spectators as close as we can, the way basketball and hockey do.

"Three, the PBA has become more media-friendly. Beth Marshall, who worked for the National Basketball Association and then was public relations director for the WNBA, is in charge.

"And, four, we have made a huge effort to bring back the bowling stars who dropped out for financial reasons by increasing the prize fund by 138%--from $1.6 million in 2000-01 to $4.3 million for 2001-02. The best bowlers are back."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Century Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group