Prizefund at NSW Open

I honestly think it would be a great idea to adopt this format for some of the tournaments, including ranked tournaments (the women can still be ranked on their finishing position amongst the other women), as it would help improve womens bowling in Australia. There should also be incentives for the Top 3-5 women for example who dont make the final.

Having a quick look at results from this years ranked tournies however suggests that 9 pins a game may not be enough to start with to give them a fair shot. Quick calculations suggest that in the Aus Masters out of 40, 5 Women would have made it. No women would have made Melb Cup Final, 2 in Aus Open. QLD Open was a different story however where 14 women would have made the first cut of 32 (which i think is quite fair)

Growing up as a junior i was always encouraged to bowl in harder tournaments and higher grades because it exposes you to better bowlers, hopefully encouraging you to improve also. This year being exposed to the Asian Champs and recently the Aus Masters with the internationals showed me that if i want to compete rather than participate on that level (which i do) i have to step all my training up a notch!

Adopting the above formats may assist in the further development of womens bowling is Aus, and im pretty sure there are women out there who would love nothing more than to stick it to a few of the blokes once in a while.

I think its worth a shot, what do the women out there think??
 
Everyone expects someone else to support them, it's not up to organisations to sponsor a tournament it's up to the bowlers to get out there and support there own tournaments.
 
I would definitely give it a crack if we were giving a certain amount of pins a game...not harm in trying is there? Of course the pattern would have to be fair for both the women and the men..not one that is just gonna be male dominated
 
becka_girl said:
I would definitely give it a crack if we were giving a certain amount of pins a game...not harm in trying is there? Of course the pattern would have to be fair for both the women and the men..not one that is just gonna be male dominated
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Here we go again, I cant believe that we are looking at giving some of the best bowlers in this country an unfair advantage. 8 pins extra will not bring in extra females. This system is already creating a lot of resentment amongst male bowlers in the Vic sports series as can be seen by the post. We need to address the problem at the ground level. We need more league bowlers bowling tourneys. There are plenty of male and female league bowlers who are capable of bowling tourneys as the nationals showed but choose not to for what ever reason. I believe tournament bowling is not welcoming enough to league bowlers.We need better marketing of these events and more personal invitations to the large market that is out there. In fact we need better marketing of the whole sport.
 
Docta said:
Here we go again, I cant believe that we are looking at giving some of the best bowlers in this country an unfair advantage. 8 pins extra will not bring in extra females. This system is already creating a lot of resentment amongst male bowlers in the Vic sports series as can be seen by the post. We need to address the problem at the ground level. We need more league bowlers bowling tourneys. There are plenty of male and female league bowlers who are capable of bowling tourneys as the nationals showed but choose not to for what ever reason. I believe tournament bowling is not welcoming enough to league bowlers.We need better marketing of these events and more personal invitations to the large market that is out there. In fact we need better marketing of the whole sport.
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Yes but a lot of league bowlers may not be able to afford to travel to the tournaments. I think thats the main reason we struggle for female bowlers is because most of them have a family or are starting a family and simply cant afford it
 
A lot of the men are in the same boat too - with families or financial problems....it's just that they still bowl!! Much to their wives/girlfriends disapproval!! Lol ;)
 
If tournaments aren't supported by the local bowlers they will lose them eventually. Look what happened in SA!

No local tournaments makes it hard for people like myself to decide to return to the sport as travelling interstate for every event is just not financially able to happen.

I saw it happen for years in SA and eventually the one and only major SA based women's event was lost, so too for the mens event which is very sad for bowling across the nation. And very sad for my social life as I now can't catch up with interstate friends who came to A-Town to bowl ... lol!
 
JoSpencer said:
If tournaments aren't supported by the local bowlers they will lose them eventually. Look what happened in SA!

No local tournaments makes it hard for people like myself to decide to return to the sport as travelling interstate for every event is just not financially able to happen.

I saw it happen for years in SA and eventually the one and only major SA based women's event was lost, so too for the mens event which is very sad for bowling across the nation. And very sad for my social life as I now can't catch up with interstate friends who came to A-Town to bowl ... lol!
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I agree Jo, anytime a local tournament folds, it is the tournament bowlers who should shoulder the majority of the blame. The SA Cup used to be an excellent tournament to compete in, when I was bowling, reknowned for the crappiest approaches at Woodville or the sauna at Crossroads, still didnt matter, bowlers wanted to bowl. Now I know that AMF did a poor job of running this tournament, decreasing the prize money, not really caring about losing entries until it folded, but it was up to the bowlers to support this. From memory there wasn't a heap of support from local bowlers and the main influx was from elsewhere, much like tournaments in the West.

IMO, the majority of states should have at least 3-4 small tournaments that are value for money to compete in and have one major style tournament like an SA Cup where these regular tournament players can pit their skills against the rest of the countries bowlers who would travel for the increased prize money. And tournaments don't have to be super top heavy in money, as most bowlers will always look at the cut off money amounts and weight up the costs against the prize money.

And the smaller tournaments within states don't have to be big super tournaments, but should be affordable and enough to entice the average bowler to the more serious player in. They don't need to be played on sports patterns or any funky conditions, straight up house shots or variations until there is a time where bowlers become more accustomed to tournament play etc.

You would expect 40 bowlers to be a reasonable target for small tournaments, maybe $100 entry fee, 10 games straight up held over one day, working out a rough prize fund, minus game fees, you might find only $2-300 worth of sponsorship is required. And if you wanted to hold a slightly more serious event, maybe say $180 entry, traditional two day event, you would probably need $7-900 in extra sponsorship to make a decent prize fund, certainly not unachievable. Both events would pay say $400 and $1000 respectively, pay 1 in 3 to 14th place and could become a half decent little circuit in the lead up to a national event.
 
Michael Little said:
And tournaments don't have to be super top heavy in money, as most bowlers will always look at the cut off money amounts and weight up the costs against the prize money.
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Most sensible comment made on here for months. As much as it will cause certain bowlers to whinge, top heavy prizefunds are what is killing bowling. At the end of the day, the more people that cover some or all of their costs, the more that will come back next year.

If anyone bowling in Australia is actually trying to make money then they are in the wrong sport.

As Michael has said, a return to local tournaments, perhaps even a NSW grand prix style circuit would be an ideal out come. Without these events there isn't a national tournament curcuit to bowl in.
 
CT said:
Most sensible comment made on here for months. As much as it will cause certain bowlers to whinge, top heavy prizefunds are what is killing bowling. At the end of the day, the more people that cover some or all of their costs, the more that will come back next year.

If anyone bowling in Australia is actually trying to make money then they are in the wrong sport.

As Michael has said, a return to local tournaments, perhaps even a NSW grand prix style circuit would be an ideal out come. Without these events there isn't a national tournament curcuit to bowl in.
Click to expand...

I wasn't so much talking about NSW but other states that have zero to bowl in currently like SA and WA. NSW has two sports series, a host of individual tournaments here and there throughout the year, QLD has the Wide Bay series plus bits n pieces, VIC has its own Sports Series and again a few other individual tournaments.

Some top heavy prize funds aren't too bad, I mean the Masters is pretty top heavy in reality, but for the purpose of these tournaments which are on a smaller scale, then the way to attract more bowlers is to spread the prize money across the places. However for National tournaments, which should be seen as a step up, well we shouldn't be paying down so far, to sometimes half the field. It should be a requirement to bowl well to make the cut and if you don't bowl well enough to be in it or close to it, then you really don't deserve too much return on your entry costs. There should be a difference and a step up between the level required and in reality, most players who begin to regularly bowl the smaller tournaments (that don't usually bowl National tournaments) and build confidence to try a national tournament in their own state, will probably not attempt bowling another event in another state for a while.
 
haha nice mick i know some men that would cry if they ever got beaten by a female at any game lol but i do strongly agree men's fees should go to the men and womens to the women. it is shame to see that most women dont bother bowling tournaments and the ones they actually turn up for they winge because there arent enough players to make it competitive. Personally i enjoy playing against the men they are alot more entertaining because they all bowl differently rather then just playing down 10 board not that there is anything wrong with that, but id rather watch mick play right angles lol
 
I guess we should just see how the mixed tournaments go next year because there is a fair few of them! Obviously the girls don't get the extra pins or anything but maybe if the ladies dont participate, they may introduce this in 2013?
 
I seem to remember that there was, not all that long ago, a woman bowler who won several major tournaments in Australia, outright. Now, what was her name, again? Anyone out there who can help me with that?

Also, wasn't there one in America recently won on the pro tour?
 
Jim, Cara Honeychurch won many Aussie Tournaments against the men. Cara & Carol Gianotti were very successful in USA on the Womens Pro Tour which is now defunct. Dockers
 
Het Willey,
I remember that, I was one of them. Another bloody second. Along the way see beat Allsop, Bradford then me.
Cheers Lovey
 
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