Everyone credits Jason Belmonte with bringing two-handed bowling to the PBA. But a bowler from Rowlett, Texas was throwing it on tour years before him — until one PBA ruling killed his ball.
So who really invented two-handed bowling? Not Belmonte, and not the twenty-year-old Finn who lit up the 2004 U.S. Open on television. His name was Chuck Lande. He had five PBA Regional Tour titles thrown with a two-handed, no-thumb release, and he was competing on the PBA circuit while Osku Palermaa was still a child — nineteen years before Palermaa's TV debut in Anaheim, twenty-two before Belmonte won at AMF Babylon Bowl.
Lande's ball had no thumb hole. In its place was a weight hole — standard, legal equipment. At a national tour stop at Forum Bowl in Grand Prairie, Texas, PBA tournament director Harry Golden came down to the approach and told him that because of the way he bowled, he could not have a weight hole. Put the thumb in it, or the ball's off the stage. There was no written ban on two-handed bowling — the PBA never needed one. It had a tournament director, an equipment spec, and a pro shop. Lande re-drilled a conventional ball two hours before his first game and never threw his two-handed shot at a PBA national event again.
Watch the full documentary: youtu.be/b__dWxty_Po