He’s on a roll: Bucks bowler is a star

Bill O'Neill started bowling when he was 5, maybe younger. He used to go to the old Fairlanes in Fairless Hills with his "grandpop," and attended his father's league matches at Jubilee Lanes in Levittown. He watched PBA Tour events on television, and followed Pete Weber and Amleto Monacelli.

Two decades later, Weber and Monacelli are still part of the tour, sitting in the top third of the player-of-the year standings.

And O'Neill?

Here's looking up at you, kid.

The 28-year-old Bucks County resident, born two years after Weber joined the pro tour, is tied for the lead in the player-of-the-year race with one tournament remaining. In his fifth pro season, after being named collegiate bowler of the year three times, O'Neill has compiled 56 points, as has Walter Ray Williams Jr., at 50 the tour's second-oldest member.

O'Neill has won two of the PBA's 17 events this season - the Chameleon Championship in August in Allen Park, Mich., and the U.S. Open, one of the association's four majors, in February in Indianapolis. He averages almost 219, and he has earned $143,075, second best on the tour.

"He's done fantastic," Weber said. "Right now, he has two titles. Me myself, I think he should have five or six, maybe even seven titles by now, the way he makes adjustments, the way he handles himself.

"He has finished second several times in the last three years. Take one break back, and he has a couple of more titles."

The U.S. Open victory gave O'Neill a three-year tour exemption, which means he doesn't have to go through qualifying for events, and is guaranteed at least the PBA minimum, $1,800, in prize money for non-open tournaments.

O'Neill broke onto the tour in 2005, after participating in the trials in Merrillville, Ind. Bowlers there competed for 10 available exemptions, and O'Neill grabbed the last one by rolling a strike in his final frame.

He has bowled 13 300 games on tour, and his season average has ranged from 215 to 223. He is vying for his first player-of-the-year title four years after being named PBA Rookie of the Year.

"It would be unbelievable because it would put a stamp in the history books with my name on it, as player of the year," said O'Neill, who lives in Southampton. "It's something that everybody strives to do in bowling as a professional - you want to be player of the year. That would be the biggest accomplishment of my career."

If you think success is simply a matter of putting the ball in the pocket, aiming for strikes and converting spares, you're probably not familiar with the terms cheetah, viper, chameleon, scorpion and shark. Those are the oil patterns used on lanes in tour events for about the last five years. The oil is applied starting at the foul line of the 60-foot lanes, extending 35 to 43 feet, and the ball reacts differently to each pattern.

"You have to know about the bowling ball and the lanes, how the ball is drilled, what's inside the ball, and it's a lot more challenging than it was when you just picked up one ball and threw it in the same spot," O'Neill said.

How scientific is it? Ask O'Neill about his bowling balls, and he might sound more like Albert Einstein than Earl Anthony.

"They're reactive resin," he said. "It's a very tacky material. That's why it hooks so much. Inside, there are cores that are shaped differently to get them to hook in different spots of the lane."

O'Neill grew up in Levittown and learned bowling from his father, also Bill. "I've always loved it," he said. He attended Conwell-Egan High School, bowled for the varsity team, and said he was "one of the top couple of guys" in the Catholic and Public Leagues. None of his high school memories are very positive, he said, because his team never got past St. John Neumann to win a Catholic League title.

He graduated in 1999, and attended Bucks County Community College for a year before going to Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.

The school is a power in men's bowling, which isn't sponsored by the NCAA because most of the bowlers have lost their amateur status by earning money in regional tournaments. The United States Bowling Congress is the governing body.

A business management major, the 5-foot-8 O'Neill was first-team all-American four times, and Collegiate Bowler of the Year in 2001, 2003 and 2004.

The next year, he struggled a bit after he received the pro exemption. "Just the fact that you're bowling against guys that you've watched on TV your whole life, and now you have to compete against them, that was hard," he said. But in his third event, the Greater Omaha Classic, he bowled on an oil pattern that he said was like a track to the pocket for him. He reached the TV finals, and finished second.

He ended up winning $61,080 in his rookie season. Overall, though, he says he spends about $20,000 a year in expenses, including travel and hotels, and tournament entry fees. He rooms with another bowler on the road to save money.

O'Neill didn't earn as much in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons, but last year, his winnings climbed to more than $90,000 and, in the spring, he signed his first sponsorship deal.

"I'm definitely a lot more patient now," said O'Neill, who might bowl more than 30 games during a week, over three to five days, particularly if he reaches the finals. "In college and high school, if I didn't start out with a good game, my head was everywhere."

The recent U.S. Open tested his patience. Formats for tournaments vary, and this one began with three six-game segments. And after the first, O'Neill was in 185th place with a 189 average.

He then posted the top average of the second six-game block, 243, and vaulted into 13th place en route to reaching the finals.

In the championship game, he failed to convert a 2-10 split and fell behind by 13 pins after two frames. He then finished with 10 consecutive strikes and defeated Mike Scroggins, 267-207.

O'Neill earned $60,000 for the victory and, because the tournament was a major, 24 points in the player-of-the-year standings. First through fifth places are generally worth 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1 points, but the figures increase by 50 percent for majors.

O'Neill and Williams, who have an eight-point lead over Scroggins in the standings, are competing in this week's Lumber Liquidators Marathon Open in Baltimore. The finals will be Sunday.

The tour season will end in late April in Tokyo with the Japan Cup, which doesn't count in the point standings. After that, O'Neill will get ready for his next event.

He'll be getting married on May 7.

Her name is Christi White.

True to his lifelong passion, she's a bowler.