By BILL SNIER
CUYAHOGA FALLS — The 2025 PBA50 Tour Rookie of the Year admittedly was feeling some pressure to perform.
“You always want your partner to bowl well because it takes the pressure off you,” 51-year-old Riverview, Fla., right-hander Tom Daugherty said. “But it gets to the point where when he is bowling so good and you’re not, that it actually makes it harder. It actually adds pressure.”
That all disappeared by late in the second half of B squad during Saturday’s eight-game qualifying rounds for the PBA-PBA50 Doubles-Clutch Lanes Central Open at Clutch Lanes and Sports Center.
Partnering for the second year in a row with two-time PBA Tour winner Shawn Maldonado, Daugherty went from averaging 206. 5 over his four games of qualifying to averaging 253.5 his last four, including a 300 in Game 8. With Maldonado, a 39-year-old Houston right-hander, averaging 247.12 overall, the pair topped the leaderboard heading into Sunday’s Baker System match play rounds.
“We gave good chemistry and normally see the same things and are able to fee off each other like that,” said Moldonado, who was eliminated with Daugherty in the 2025 edition of the event by eventual champions Eric Jones and Dino Castillo.
“But for the first three games, for whatever reason, that didn’t happen. I was finally able to get him on board and I saw what I normally see from him.”
A 558 in Game 8 took the pair to the top of the leaderboard with 3,817 total pinfall. The top four teams — which also included Andrew and Anthony Neuer (3,785), Bill Watson and Evan Genz (3,763) and Jerry Rich and Casey Cohagan (3,752) — received first-round byes during the first round of best-of-seven Baker System match play, which begins at 8 a.m.
“Once I got comfortable and got good enough ball reaction where I could see my ball do the right thing, I was OK,” Daugherty said. “That last game was a bonus. We knew we had made the cut. It was just trying to get that bye at that point.”
The pair never topped the leaderboard on B squad until that final game. Watson led the way with a 1,928 series, including a 300 in Game 3 (241 average), as he and Genz teamed up to lead A squad. Seven teams off of B squad reached the final 12.
Two-time winners Michael Haggitt and Graham Fach earned the final spot in match play with 3,656, finishing just three pins ahead of Charles (Butch) Ferrell and Ryan Liederbach (3,653).
LEARNING FROM PAST
The 2025 edition of this event was Rich’s first PBA event in 15-plus years and it was “an eye-oppener” for the 51-year-old Painesville right-hander, whose family owns and operates Rich Lanes in Fairport Harbor.
“My biggest adjustment was learning to throw it softer,” Rich said.
“I think the back of the building was his best target last year,” said Cohagan, who earned his first PBA regional title at Jackson, Mich., in 2024.
“It really taught me to change my game over the summer while bowling some senior regionals,” said Rich, who also coaches the Fairport Harbor Harding High School bowling team and plans on bowling most of the stops on the PBA50 Tour this season. “I changed everything based off that. It’s something I’m always fighting, but once I got through the first couple of games, I was all right.”
Rich, after shooting just 182 and 178 his first two games, respectively, averaged 237 over his final six games. Cohagan kept the team in the hunt early by averaging 263.5 over his first four games, including three over 264. He finished with 1,970 (246.2 average).
“I didn’t have to move more than three boards on three single pairs. I just fudged it if I had to, throw it a little harder or throw it a little slower and let it set up earlier,” said Cohagan, who used the Black Hammer all day.
“They hooked more than we expected based off Friday’s practice and what we saw on A squad and at my house,” said Rich, who also put the oil pattern down at Rich Lanes for a practice session for the pair.
The bye was a big thing for Rich, who had to leave Clutch Lanes and go straight to his center and work the remainder of the evening.
“When I was in my 20s, it was nothing to bowl this, close and then bowl something (Sunday),” Rich said. “It’s a little different now.”
FRIENDS LOOK FOR MORE
Lewis Center 50-year-old senior righty Dan Higgins, who won last week at Ballerz Sports Club in Wooster in a PBA50 regional, and his partner, 39-year-old Reynoldsburg righty Chad Roberts, were able to rally after a slow start on A squad to sit seventh overall with 3,713 after finishing as A squad’s runner-up.
Higgins, who had 166 an 182 respectively in Games 2 and 3, and Roberts, who had 205 and 163, respectively, those same games, averaged 240.8 and 255.2, respectively over their last five.
“In Game 1, we were right on with what we wanted to do, but games 2 and 3 were not how we broke them down,” Roberts said. “It felt like a combination of misreading a pair, throwing bad shots and being in the wrong zone with the wrong idea.”
“Errant shots, wrong guesses resulted in two bad scores,” said Higgins, who has bowled just seven events as a PBA50 member after holding a tour card as a junior player from 1999 through 2009. “Then we communicated and did something different and you saw the results.”
The pair finished 480 over those final five games to jump into contention.
“The last five games, we didn’t have to move a whole lot. We could already see the zone and the ball changes after the first three,” Roberts said.
LOOKING TOWARD NATIONALS
Roberts and Higgins, part of the Higgy’s Aquarium team, own three United States Bowling Congress Eagles for first-place team finishes — which puts each just one short of the USBC Hall of Fame, according to new rules adopted just two years ago before their team won its latest Eagles.
They will make a return trip to the National Bowling Stadium in Reno, Nev., in June for the 2025 edition with the familiar goal — to win the team all-events title.
“If we’re bowling well in that, we know someone in our group is going to do better in the other smaller events (team, singles, doubles),” Roberts said.
Asked if they had seen the higher scores posted so far, including a regular doubles record last week, Roberts said it appears to be higher scoring, but …
“They have found a way to make the oil pattern better scoring by making the lower a little higher,” Robert said. “But the ceiling might be around the same. But we won’t know until we get out there.
“It seems to bring up the attainable, but it’s not massively achievable. They have a way of exploiting it. The last couple of years you could either score well in singles or doubles, but rarely do you see someone score well in both. That might change this year.”
Higgins has done the math. He said Roberts was just 70 pins short of a possible four more Eagles, with three seconds and three fourths to go with his three wins. Higgins owns five seconds, two fourths and two fifths.
But one thing both are hoping for — a doubles Eagle together.
“We want the team and all-events wins, but if we win doubles at nationals, that would be great,” Roberts said. “We know what we are capable of doing, and we know what we can do.”
That would mean more than last week’s first PBA title to Higgins.
“It was more a relief that I finally got some sort of PBA title,” said Higgins, who is married to the former Jennifer Petrick, a PWBA player and former Canton resident. “But I feel I’ve won much bigger amateur tournaments (Bud Light Challenge, Cleveland Kickoff, etc.) and they were more of an achievement against PBA Tour players.
“I’ve been solid over my first few tournaments with a second and three fourths and top eights. But getting over that hump was a relief … and I get a banner now.”
Roberts, a nonmember, said it was a goal for the pair to win a PBA title together
Both hope to add their own shirts to the champions wall display at Clutch Lanes and Sports Center for a different doubles title this weekend.
As for Daugherty and Maldonado, they know a Baker System format brings new challenges.
“I need him,” Maldonado added, “and he needs me.”
“In Bakers, if one of us is bowling bad, you can’t overcome it,” Daugherty said. “We both have to be on it.”
NOTEBOOK: There were a total of 38 teams in the event. … It addition to Watson and Daugherty, Akron senior right-hander Don Hogue and junior PBA Tour player Bailey Mavrick also had 300 games while Ferrell shot 290. … Daugherty won this event with Tom Hess in 2023. Hess bowled with Vincent Bellar and the pair finished 21st and didn’t make the cut. … Other past winners to make the cut with Haggitt and Fach were Brad Angelo (2020), with partner Kris Prather; and Patrick Dombrowski (2014), who partnered with Larry Verble. Castillo again made the cut, but Andrew Anderson is his partner this season. … Hogue and Doylestown’s Joe Bailey, another member of the Higgy’s Aquarium team with three USBC Eagles, missed the cut by just 10 pins to finish 14th. … Seeds 5 through 12 will pair off in the first round of match play, with the winners then being seeded in the bracket against the top four teams in the round of eight. Winners then advance to the semifinals. Both the semifinal and final rounds will be best-of-five Baker System while the first two rounds are best-of-seven. … Admission is free for spectators.
See complete scores here: https://www.leaguepals.com/league-info?id=696a68db8c0a2f150b2c9399