SUN CITY – It’s bowling night. It’s your favorite sport…join your best friends for friendly competition, relax and enjoy life for a few hours. You’re good enough at it so you can enjoy the competition and the camaraderie. If you have a good game or two and your team wins, it’s a bonus.
You take a few practice shots, get a few pocket hits, the pins seem to be falling. The games begin.
You nail the first shot, then the second, and the third. “Hey,” you say, “this is good, I just might have my high game tonight.” You come in a little high on the fourth frame, but you strike anyway. You come in on the “Brooklyn” side on frame five, but you drop them all. The strikes keep coming…six, seven, eight. You think, “This is unbelievable, I must be in some kind of zone.” Your teammates and some bowlers in nearby lanes are watching with peripheral vision, but not saying anything.
You’re tense, but not nervous. Every time you prepare for your shot, you remember to follow your usual procedures, don’t vary, don’t try anything new, focus on the pins, forget everything else, focus…focus…focus. On nine, your curve doesn’t appear to break in as usual, and your heart soars to your throat as the ball approaches. It hits the head pin a tad light, but the seven-pin wobbles and then topples. Now on ten, you need three more, and the dream of the perfect 300 roars through your brain like a runaway train.
Ron Tenggren playing with the Sharks Wednesday, January 2 Brunswick XL.
(Hannah Sturtecky | Sun Day Photo)
“Don’t get nervous, maintain your preparation and approach, and stay focused,” you think. But you also ask if this is real or a fantasy. “Is this really happening? My average is just under 200. I’m way out of my league, but if I can hang in for three more…” You note that most other bowlers are not stopping to watch you; they actually appear to be ignoring you. But you know they’re watching, just not cheering or yelling at you so as not to distract you.
Your first ball on 10 is perfect, and so is the next one. “Don’t rush the last one,” you think. “And don’t blow it. Think of it as just another frame, just another shot, just another….”
The pins all fall. You let out a ton of air from your lungs, and the roar of the crowd confirms you’ve achieved what most bowlers only dream or joke about in a career of bowling nights and beer frames. Luck and talent have joined to make you perfect, at least for 30 minutes on a bowling lane.
The above is of course a fantasy, but it’s one that actually played out for a Sun City bowler recently.
Meet Ron Tenggren, a resident of Sun City for over nine years. There are hundreds of Sun Citians in several bowling leagues in the Huntley area, and he is one of the best of them. He has performed and experienced the above “perfect 300” scenario 13 times in his life, and he has come within a pin of doing it four other times.
His last perfecto, and his second one since he moved to Sun City in 2003, occurred Dec. 6 at Bowl-Hi Lanes in Huntley, in the Sun City men’s league. He rolled the other one “five or six years ago at Bowl-Hi,” according to his wife, Sandra.
Performing his favorite sport perfectly is Tenggren’s reward for his outstanding work ethic. He has learned, practiced, and re-practiced every possible scenario and technique in the sport over and over until he feels comfortable that he is getting it right.
Tenggren has been bowling for 62 of his 71 years. He averages 218 in three different leagues in the Chicago area, and he is quietly modest and humble about his achievements.
“You don’t try to roll 300; it just happens,” he said. “If you stay focused on your technique and consistency, and you don’t get distracted when you miss a shot, you give yourself a good chance to succeed in bowling. I felt especially good on Dec. 6, the strikes started coming, and I just kept going frame by frame. On the perfect games, you learn to block out everything else and get into a zone where it’s just you and the pins.”
Tenggren actually is a renaissance man in sports. He bowls in the fall and winter, plays golf and softball in Sun City leagues all spring and summer, and plays bridge when time allows in the Sun City Bridge Club.
“I like golf, softball, and bowling because bowling ends in late winter when golf and softball start, and bowling starts up again in the fall when golf ends,” he said.
He actually rolled four 299 games about the time he got his first 300, he said. “I had two 299 games before I got my first 300, and then I rolled two more 299 games shortly after. I remember that I had pocket hits in the final ball in all of those games, but I just didn’t carry one or two pins. Luck plays a big part in bowling. I also remember that I didn’t get too upset about coming up one pin short. If you roll 299, you’re pretty happy.”
Tenggren has had conversations with friends about which is harder, getting a hole-in-one in golf or rolling a 300 in bowling.
“I really think a 300 game is harder because you have to hit 12 perfect or very good shots, as opposed to only one swing in golf,” he said.
Has he ever gotten a hole in one in golf? “No,” he laughed.
A native of Chicago, Ron and Sandra came to Sun City from Elgin.
“I started bowling in local youth leagues when I was nine and then in high school,” he said. “I got some instruction in the youth leagues and then from coaches in high school. At Steinmetz High School, I bowled on a travel team against teams from high schools all over the city. We bowled at Stratford and Manor Bowl, two of the most popular bowling places near Belmont and Central Avenues. I later bowled in college at ITT and then started in men’s leagues.”
In golf, Tenggren scores in the high 80s, and his best round ever was a 78. In softball, he said he can still run pretty well in spurts and is a better fielder than hitter. He is a recognized leader in the softball league and plans to manage a team this coming season.
A slim, six-foot tall retired computer programmer and project manager, Tenggren is not a fitness buff, but he keeps in shape with year-round athletic activities.
“I’ve had some knee problems, but I’ve luckily avoided serious health issues so far,” he said.
Has he ever considered turning pro in bowling?
“No, not close,” he said, “The competition on the pro tour is so intense and high, I’m just not good enough for that. The pressure to raise money and get sponsors is great; I’ve never considered that. I like to have a life outside bowling.”
Sandra also is an active bowler, maintaining an average in the high 160s. She also is a dance instructor at Sun City.
In case you want to catch a glimpse of Ron in action, he rolls at Bowl-Hi in the Sun City men’s league on Thursday afternoons, in the mixed league at Bowl-Hi on Wednesday evenings, and in a men’s league in Wooddale on Thursday evenings.
