When PBA Hall of Famer Pete Weber captured the PBA50 South Shore Open at Hammond’s Olympia Lanes in 2016, he was in the midst of a season when pretty much nothing went wrong.
The following year, just about everything that could go wrong did. A lingering hip ailment forced Weber to withdraw from multiple tournaments and put his future in the sport in question.
This season, however, the 55-year-old is pain-free and back to competing for championships and entertaining fans with an engaging style.
Back at Olympia for this week’s South Shore Open, he averaged 247 over eight games in Tuesday’s first round, good for third after the first day of qualifying.
“I love bowling here,” said Weber, who has two wins at Olympia. “I have bowled very well at Olympia over the years. … It took me a few frames to figure out what I was doing (on Tuesday). I hadn’t bowled in month, so I was not sure what was going on.
“I remembered something that I did in Vegas — I pushed the ball out on my release and not down. Once I did that, I started getting into a flow. My timing was good. Everything clicked, and I am very happy. Indiana is one of my favorite states to bowl in. As long as I feel good that’s all I can ask.”
Feeling good is something that Weber has generally enjoyed on the lanes since he started his professional career in 1979. The son of Hall of Famer Dick Weber, Pete successfully forged his own path on the tour.
He is tied with Earl Anthony with 10 major championships — the last coming five years ago — and joined Walter Ray Williams Jr. in 2017 as the just the second bowler to earn more than $4 million on the tour. Only Williams, Anthony, and Norm Duke have more national titles than Weber.
That made his physical issues of 2017 all the more frustrating.
“I pinched a nerve in my back about three years ago, and it decides what hip it wants to go to,” he said. “Sometimes it goes to left one and sometimes to the right one. I definitely don’t like it when it goes to the left one. I’m feeling really good now. It’s nice to bowl with no pain for a while.”
Weber is hoping he can get back into the kind of groove he experienced in 2016, when he averaged 237, captured six PBA50 tiles and earned more than $73,000. He also collected more than $100,000 on the national tour for the first time since 2013.
“I just got the right balls in my hand at the right times,” he said. “I got the breaks I needed. Without breaks, you’re not going to win. It’s nice to get breaks. When you have confidence in the product, it is lot easier to bowl.”
Anthony Nasella is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
