On February 25 at age 93, Glenn Allison bowled in his record 72nd USBC Open Championships tournament. That accomplishment calls for some historical perspective.

The event began as the American Bowling Congress Tournament in Chicago in 1901. Though originally conceived as a one-time-only event, the ABC Tournament became an annual part of the bowling calendar, eventually transitioning into the gender-inclusive USBC Open Championships. No tournaments were held in 1943-45 because of World War II. The Covid pandemic cancelled the 2020 meet. That makes the 2024 tournament the 120th.

As early as 1935, ABC officials were celebrating Peter Howley and George Bangart, two Chicago men who’d bowled in every one of the 35 ABC Tournaments held to date at the time. Howley and Bangart were still going strong in 1941, when ABC launched its Hall of Fame. Their 41-year participation record was considered so important that both men were listed on that first Hall ballot. Howley was elected that year. Bangart never was.

After the three-year break for the war, Bangart dropped out. Howley continued to bowl, running his string to 46 straight tournaments in 1949. He then retired from bowling.

Within a few years, Howley’s mark was surpassed by Harry Steers. In 1955, Steers became the first bowler to compete in 50 ABC Tournaments, and was awarded a diamond lapel pin in recognition. Before his death in 1962, he’d extended the participation record to 57 tournaments.

Bill Doehrman of Fort Wayne stood second on the list at the time of Steers’s death, with 52 consecutive ABC’s. Doehrman’s longtime teammate Chick Carr had 48 in a row, ranking fifth. Carr stopped after reaching 62, but Doehrman kept on. Doehrman bowled his 71st consecutive ABC in 1982, then quit. He died in 1984.

Meanwhile, Joe Norris was adding to his own string. After Norris tied Doehrman’s mark in 2000, the cover story for the 2001 tournament program proclaimed that “Bowling’s Ironman” would be setting a new record with his 72nd appearance on March 12. But Norris died a few weeks before his scheduled date.

In 2016 longtime Detroit star Sylvester Thiel tied the Doehrman/Norris record of 71 appearances in the event. That is the record Allison has now broken.

Allison’s Run
Allison’s adventure began in 1947. The ABC Tournament was coming to Los Angeles that year, the first time it would be held on the West Coast. In the days before interstate highways and cheap air fares, a significant number of bowlers from east of the Rockies elected to stay home, and ABC entries were down. But on the other hand, Western bowlers could now more easily compete in the great national tournament. 

One of them was 16-year-old Glenn Allison. He’d posted a score of 77 in his first game at age 11, and worked his way up from there. At the 1947 ABC, he bowled only in the Team event, shooting a creditable 547. The tournament moved on to Detroit and Atlantic City the next two years, and Allison skipped them.

By 1950, Allison had won a couple of California tournaments. He made the trip to Columbus for that year’s ABC, and cashed in both the Singles and All-Events. Then, with the country embroiled in the Korean War, he entered the service.

Allison was back in civilian clothes and back at the ABC in 1954. At Seattle, he rang up an 1,865 All-Events total, good for 27th place in the standings. Now he began a string of 70 consecutive tournaments.

Bowling was enjoying its Great Team Era. Fresh from being named Southern California’s Bowler of the Year in 1956, Allison was recruited by Joe Kristof for the Pabst Blue Ribbon team. That meant a move to Chicago. 

He quickly adjusted to his new home. During the 1957-58 season, Allison made the finals of two major match-game events, the All-Star and the World’s Invitational, and scored victories in two well-regarded regional events, the Empire State Open in New York and the Harry Grant Individual in California. He also found time to lead three of Chicago’s top traveling leagues in average. He was honored as “King of Chicago Bowlers,” and was named to Bowlers Journal’s All-American Team for the 1957-58 season.

Meanwhile, Allison was also making a name for himself on TV. In the spring of 1959, he was in Toledo to film the nationally syndicated Championship Bowling program. The show’s format was an elimination event of three-game matches, and Allison made it to the final showdown before losing to Ned Day. However, his 249-243-290 — 782 during the eliminations — would remain the highest series ever bowled on the long-running show.

A few months after his TV heroics, Allison moved to St. Louis for a spot on the reorganized Falstaff Beer team. The city’s Anheuser-Busch Brewery was getting a lot of publicity with its Budweiser Beer team. The Fallstaff Brewery decided it was time to counter its rival beer-maker with a bowling super-team of its own.   

As the 1960s opened, Allison was reaching his competitive peak. By now, he was a member of the Brunswick Advisory Staff. A charter member of the Professional Bowlers Association, he bowled in Tour events when his Falstaff and Brunswick schedules permitted. In September 1961, he won the Southern Match Game Championship, a semi-major title in those days. In March 1962, he won his first PBA title at Memphis. Then he was off to Des Moines for the ABC Tournament.

Winning Ways at the Open Championships
Allison captured his first championship eagle at that 1962 ABC in spectacular fashion. Rolling in the Classic Doubles with teammate Dick Hoover, Allison opened with 290, then followed with 245-245 for 780. That series was the second-highest set ever rolled in the big tournament. Hoover’s 651 gave the pair their winning 1,431. A second PBA title at Salt Lake City that summer was the icing on the cake, as Allison earned another All-American citation for the 1961-62 season.

Allison won his third PBA title at Oklahoma City in 1963. The next year, he chalked up Tour victories at Tucson and Oxnard, California. And at the 1964 ABC Tournament, he claimed another eagle.

In 1964, teams entered in the Classic Division bowled six games instead of the customary three. That was considered a fairer test of a team’s ability. It also meant an extra squad of star bowlers that would attract more paying spectators to the arena. The Falstaffs won the Classic Team event with a record 6,417 six-game set. Allison’s 1,326 lead the way.

Big-time team bowling was dying out, and Falstaff dropped its sponsorship after 1964. At the 1966 ABC, Allison and a few of his Falstaff teammates got together in a make-up team, under the banner of Ace Mitchell Shur-Hooks. The Shur-Hooks posted a 6,538 total to win the Classic Team championship, and shatter the record set by the Falstaffs two years earlier. Once again Allison was the top man, this time with a 1,399 series.

In 1970, Allison won his fourth ABC championship. Opening his Classic Division Singles with a pair of 258s. He closed with 214 for 730.  That was good enough to take the top prize in 1970 conditions.

Allison’s Later Years
Allison retired from the PBA Tour in 1971. He operated a bowling center in Los Angeles for a few years, until the place was destroyed in a fire. Later, he managed a liquor store. He was elected to the ABC Hall of Fame in 1979, and to the PBA Hall of Fame in 1984.

He also began bowling in PBA Senior events. Though Allison notched only a single Senior Tour victory, it was a big one — the 1986 PBA Senior Championship. In the final game, he defeated No. 1 seed Bus Oswalt by a single pin, 201-200. Twenty-two years had gone by since Allison’s last victory on the PBA Tour.

Always, there was the ABC Tournament. As Allison grew older, his scores inevitably declined. Still, there were some flashes of the old fire. In the 2006 show at Corpus Christi, Texas, at age 76, he closed with a 673 Singles set to post an 1,882 All Events. Three years later and three years older, he rolled 650 in Singles.

And now, 93-year-old Glenn Allison has bowled in his 72nd Open Championships.

Iron Men
The first American athlete to be widely celebrated for a multi-year marathon was baseball’s Lou Gehrig. Between 1925 and 1939, the Yankee first baseman played in 2,130 consecutive games. Because of this string, and because of his early death at age 37, Gehrig became the inspiration for one of Gary Cooper’s finest films, The Pride of the Yankees. Gehrig also was famous enough to eventually become the namesake for the disease that killed him. (As a point of interest, the consecutive-game record that Gehrig surpassed was 1,307, held by Everett Scott — who later became a top-flight bowler and proprietor in Fort Wayne, Indiana.)

Gehrig’s streak was supposed to be “the record that would never be broken.” But in 1995, Oriole shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. did just that. Ripken ran his own string to 2,632 consecutive games, the current record, before voluntarily stopping in 1998.

Marathon streaks in other sports have not garnered the same publicity as the baseball marathoners. You might know about Gehrig and Ripken. But unless you are an aficionado of a particular sport, you probably have to do an internet search (like I did) to come up with the fact that  A.C. Green owns the basketball record, with 1,192 consecutive NBA games played. Or that in football, punter Jeff Feagles appeared in 352 straight NFL games over the course of 22 seasons. Or that the hockey record-holder is Phil Kessel, 1,064 consecutive NHL games.

Of course, these marathoners were all professional athletes, playing for professional teams. They had to perform at a certain level of excellence. Otherwise, they’d be benched, and their streak would end.

Athletic performance involves physical endurance. For an individual marathoner like Allison, it also involves a measure of ongoing dedication. You have to remain interested in the task at hand, even when the adrenalin isn’t pumping, even when your skills are in a slump. Wouldn’t it just be easier to stay home?

No! You cannot allow yourself to become bored.

And besides your own state of mind, there is something else. You have to be lucky. A serious injury can cut you short. So can something prosaic, like a missed travel connection.

All ironman records are worthy of our respect. Yet for my part, I think the only sports figure who rivals Allison’s 72-year accomplishment is Johnny Kelley. He was a long-distance runner. 

Kelley ran in 63 Boston Marathons and — the real mark of a marathon runner — finished 58 of them. His last full marathon came in 1992, at the age of 84. And like Allison, Kelley was more than a ceremonial participant. He won the 1935 and 1945 marathons, and finished second a record seven times.   

Records are made to be broken. Someday, somebody may surpass Glenn Allison’s 72-year mark at the USBC Open Championships. But then, that bowler will probably not have also rolled a 900 series.

Allison’s Open Championships Career Haul
By Gianmarc Manzione

Allison’s soaring ’60s at the USBC Open Championships brought him an impressive three victories over a five-year span during which he triumphed in both team and doubles action, the latter coming in partnership with a fellow legend in Dick Hoover.

In Hoover, Allison found a competitor every bit as scrappy as himself, as that Akron, Ohio, native left behind a life of kneeling over the scuffed shoes of strangers to shine them for change, to say nothing of the 100-pound bags of cement he hauled over his shoulder for Stuver Bros. Co. in the heat of the Akron summer before finding work as a pin boy and, eventually, glory on the lanes.

Like Allison, Hoover had a special series attached to his legacy — a record 847 he shot in 1946 at age 16, making him the youngest to shoot such a score at the time. Hoover later became the first bowler to win the USBC Masters back-to-back, doing so in 1956 and 1957. No one was going to deny a duo that accomplished their shot at a doubles crown in the USBC Open Championships — as they demonstrated in 1962, the year Allison bagged his first victory in the event.

Allison’s next two Open Championships wins came with the Falstaff Beer and Ace Mitchell Shur-Hooks squads. He later brought down the curtain on his run of titles in the tournament by taking matters into his own hands, claiming the Classic Singles title to kick off the 1970s.

Here is the lowdown on Allison’s career championships in a tournament his record 72 years of participation helped define…
 

Event	Year	Partners	Site
Classic Doubles	1962	Dick Hoover	Des Moines, Iowa
Classic Team	1964	Falstaff Beer	Oakland, Calif.
Classic Team	1966	Ace Mitchell Shur-Hooks	Rochester, N.Y.
Classic Singles	1970	Individual Event	Knoxville, Tenn.

10 for 72

Allison’s legacy in the USBC Open Championships is about mere than mere longevity; it also is about the consistent quality of his performance on those storied tournament lanes over the nine separate decades in which he bowled the event.

In six of those decades, Allison shot a nine-game All-Events score of 1,808 or greater, marking a minimum tournament average of 200.8. Overall, Allison broke the 1,800 barrier for nine games in 21 of the 72 tournaments he bowled, which marks a tournament average exceeding 200 in nearly 30 percent of the tournaments in which he competed. With a sample size as huge as 72, that’s an impressive metric. This is especially true considering that he shot his last set of 1,800+ — an 1,808 set — as recently as 2007, by which time Allison was just a few years away from turning 80 years old.

In 1970, the year he won his final title in the event (Singles), Allison smashed through for his career-high, nine-game set of 2,012 — an average of 223.5 that year.

Here is a rundown of Allison’s top-10 highest All-Events scores, including years in which he shot an additional three-game “Classic” series, the sets for which are provided below along with the overall score for all 12 games in those years…
 

All-Events Score	Site	Year	Classic Series	Overall Pinfall
2,012	Knoxville, Tenn.	1970	N/A	2,012
1,985	Des Moines, Iowa	1962	695	2,680
1,965	Oklahoma City	1976	N/A	1,965
1,942	Corpus Christi, Texas	1992	N/A	1,942
1,938	Buffalo, N.Y.	1963	N/A	1,938
1,935	Oakland, Calif.	1964	665	2,600
1,930	Baltimore	1982	N/A	1,930
1,916	Madison, Wis.	1969	575	2,491
1,911	Rochester, N.Y.	1966	751	2,662
1,884	Miami	1967	611	2,495