Taiwan Today

A “Moment of Asian Glo­ry!” cheered the July 17 headline of Taipei’s Min Sheng Daily. “Spinner Superior in the United States!” Taiwan bowler Yang Cheng-ming (楊振明), known for using a locally developed technique called “the spinner,” had won a gold medal in the 1995 Federation Internationale des Quilleurs (FIQ) World Tenpin Bowling Championships held in Reno, Nevada. The win marked the first time that an Asian bowler had snagged top honors in this competition, and the overall perform­ance of Yang and teammate Tseng Su-fen (曾素芬) ensured that Taiwan would com­pete in the 1996 Olympic Games in At­lanta, when bowling will make its second appearance as an Olympic exhibition sport.

Yang’s win was no surprise within competitive bowling circles. Athletes, coaches, and sportswriters had been watching Taiwan bowlers take top awards in international competitions for more than a decade. In 1982, Cheng Tsung-cheng (鄭宗政) had made headlines when he took third place at the AMF Bowling World Cup in The Hague by introducing a new delivery, “the spinner,” that had never be­fore been seen in international competitions. Since then, nearly every local medal winner has used the technique.

Although bowlers will not share de­tailed information on the spinner, the ba­sic principle is that the ball is thrown with a forceful twist, so that the throwing hand faces palm down rather than palm up when the ball is released. The result is that the ball spins horizontally, like a top, as it trav­els down the lane. With standard throws, the ball simply rolls vertically. The main benefit of the spinner is that when the ball hits the pins, it intensifies the way they break and spin. This makes it far easier to get a strike than with standard deliveries. (The spinner offers no advantages in at­ tempting exacting shots such as splits or singles.)

The spinner adds a third major cat­egory to major bowling techniques. The standard methods of delivery are either a straight bowl, in which the ball simply rolls down the alley along a straight line, or a small or large hook, in which the ball makes an arc as it approaches the pins. In international competitions, most bowlers use the more powerful hook, carefully gauging the point, speed, and angle at which to hit the pins. “With a hook, you have to hit exactly the right spot,” says Y.C. Ma (馬英傑), a master of the spinner technique who has won twenty-eight gold medals in inter­national competitions since 1985. Ma explains that the spinner requires less precision.

There is another benefit for local bowlers. Many had felt themselves at a disadvantage using the hook method because the technique works best with a heavier ball. This gave larger Western ath­letes an edge. Most of them use fifteen- to sixteen-pound balls, while many Asian bowlers use eleven- or twelve-pound balls.

Moreover, hook deliveries must be varied according to the amount of wax on a lane and other physical characteristics of a specific alley, but the spinner requires less adaptation to such variations. This is especially important for local bowlers be­cause most of Taiwan’s alleys do not meet international standards and conditions vary widely from place to place. “Spinner bowlers can usually warm up at a new alley after throwing one or two balls, while standard bowlers require more time for fine-tuning,” says Chang Ho-sheng (張河生), secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Bowling Association.

The only specifics on the technique that Y.C. Ma will tell reporters is that every finger plays a distinct role. Ma has his bowling balls custom-made so that the finger holes are drilled in a nonstandard con­figuration. He adds that the spinner will not hurt a player’s wrist or arm, as long as it is thrown correctly.

Over the past decade, the technique has been rapidly adopted by most of Tai­wan’s competitive bowlers, and with great success. In 1991, Y.C. Ma used it to win three gold medals at the FIQ Asian Tenpin Bowling Championships in Sin­gapore. Three years later, in last year’s Asian Games in Hiroshima, Lin Han­-cheng (林漢成) spun his way to the ROC’s first gold medal in that competition in twenty-four years. (For two decades, the island had been banned from the games due to political pressure from Beijing.) Japa­nese reporters dubbed Yang’s throw the “magic ball” because they could not explain how the technique worked.

No one knows who invented the spinner, but it definitely originated in Taiwan. On the island, the throw is known as s’para, a Taiwanese term that is shouted to bring luck when playing a popular gambling game. A s’pa is the lucky roll that guarantees a win. Bowl­ers adopted the term when wishing for a strike.

In the past year, many athletes out­side Taiwan, especially Mexican and Southeast Asian players, have begun us­ing the technique in major competitions, and international interest is growing. Coaches and players from the United States have come to Taiwan to watch Y.C. Ma, and after the 1994 Asian Games, the Japanese TV station NHK filmed a special documentary on the “magic ball,” but were unable to gather detailed informa­tion on the technique. Taiwan bowlers have been asked to teach the technique overseas, but have so far only given short demonstrations. Ma and other masters of the spinner do teach the technique to promising local bowlers.

Despite their international suc­cess, local bowlers are concerned about the future of their sport. In Taiwan, aside from the two professional sports of base­ball and basketball, athletes lack access to the corporate funding available in other countries. While even amateur bowlers in the U.S., for example, can seek corporate sponsors for their neighborhood league, there is no such tradition in Taiwan. Even corporate sponsorship of teams in the pro baseball and basketball leagues, formed in 1990 and 1994 respectively, is just catching on.

Most local bowlers charge that more funding should come from the government. The only public funding available is cov­erage of airfare and accommodation expenses for a handful of selected athletes invited to attend major international competitions. Top bowlers and their coaches also receive a short-term stipend during a pre-match preparation period of one or two months. But this money is of little help to most competi­tors; many cannot afford to take a month or more off work to participate in interna­tional matches.

The only other funding source is the National Honor Sports Awards given to athletes who win top prizes in major international competitions. Athletes who win gold medals in the Olympic Games receive NT$10 million (US$385,000), while those who win top honors in the Asian Games or comparable regional competitions receive NT$3 million (US$115,000). The athlete’s current coach and original mentor also receive bonuses of the same amount. To earn ex­tra money, in recent years, some top bowlers have named each other as coaches.

Many in the bowling business, such as Eric Cheng (鄭士誠), general manager of Chung-shan Bowling AI­ley in Taipei county, believe the government is missing an opportunity to promote Tai­wan internationally. “Bowling is probably the only sport in which the ROC can be a gold medal winner,” Cheng says. Increas­ing government funding, he says, would ensure that top athletes compete interna­tionally and would allow them to pass on their expertise to up-and-coming athletes.

Top bowler Y.C. Ma is pushing the government to hold regular islandwide competitions to build a roster of the best twenty or thirty players. These players could then receive funding allowing them to train full-time. Currently, large-scale tournaments are held only sporadically in Taiwan to recruit athletes for specific international competitions.

Another suggestion is that the govern­ment recruit talented young bowlers from universities and the military. (All Taiwan men spend two years in military service.) Some private bowling alleys already en­courage students to train by offering dis­count prices for promising young athletes. Alley manager Eric Cheng hosts compe­titions for players aged twenty-two and un­der, and allows the winners to practice at his alley for free. But he says such efforts by private alleys are not enough. “We attract only young people in this area,” he says. “The government could recruit talent from all over the island.” He also worries that the students he encourages will drop the sport after graduation since they will have no way to support themselves while playing.

There is one channel through which bowlers can earn money: by competing in the high-stakes weekly tournaments held at private alleys. Winners often come away with more than US$1,000 a night in prizes and under-the-table gambling funds. These competitions are so lucrative that they have become an obstacle for would­ be international bowlers; there is an un­written rule among tournament players that those who have competed internation­ally cannot participate. Thus, representing the ROC in overseas tournaments can mean losing one’s livelihood.

In response to the call for more fund­ing, the Ministry of Education (MOE) points out that bowling receives the same government assistance as other sports. Al­fred I.H. Chien (簡曜輝), director of the ministry’s Physical Education and Sports Department, explains that no sport has a standing national team. Instead, the MOE provides funding on a competition­ by-competition basis, providing certain athletes with official leave from work or school and giving them short-term pre­-match funding. “As a democratic country, we can’t appoint and pay certain people to serve as national athletes,” Chien says. “They must all return to normal life after competing.”

Sponsorship of international compe­titions is only a part of the department’s responsibilities. It also oversees all regular and extra­ curricular physical education programs in the school system, as well as school janitorial services and general mainte­nance programs. Of the department’s NT$2 billion (US$76.9 million) annual budget, a small percentage goes toward spon­soring athletes to participate in inter­national competi­tions. Chien supports this allocation of funding. “As an educational agency, we use physical educa­tion to encourage people to improve their health,” he says. “Besides, sports should emphasize the spirit of bettering oneself rather than winning competitions

Sub-standard bowling facilities pose a second major difficulty. The island has no bowling alley that meets international stand­ards. Most are built with shorter lanes and use lighter, 3.6-pound pins rather than the 3.8- or 3.9-pounders required in international competitions. Bowling alley owners favor these modifications because they make the game easier to play, speeding customer turnover. But the changes create hardships for bowl­ers preparing for international matches. Although some players say the wide va­riety in alley conditions has made them more adaptable as players, most argue that they need at least one standard alley in which to train.

Alfred Chien of the MOE believes such a facility is unnecessary. “If we build an­other bowling alley,” he says, “it will sim­ply add one more to the more than three hundred existing alleys.” He believes an indoor baseball stadium is a far higher pri­ority. But others in the bowling industry argue that it is the popularity of bowling that makes opening a top-class facility fea­sible. The public could be allowed to use it and profits generated could go toward funding athletes in training.

Another idea proposed is that gov­ernment-run corporations sponsor per­manent bowling teams. Currently, state-owned companies such as the China Petroleum Corp. and the Taiwan Power Co. support basketball teams in which players are paid and are promised positions within the company after they retire from athletics.

None of these suggestions is likely to be adopted soon. In the meantime, Yang Cheng-ming and Tseng Su-fen will spend the coming year preparing for the 1996 Olympics, and other Taiwan athletes will work on perfecting the spinner technique—to the chagrin of competitive bowlers around the globe.