I am the current bowling champion but don't feel good about my match today

Last week was an unusual situation at our DUMBO bolwing meetup. The championship belt had to be vacated because the person who held it was leaving the city and we have a rule that your inability to be at an event is not excusable unless there is a hospital involved. Nobody really minds this but what it resulted in was 2 of the top 4 score-winners for that week were going to go head-to-head to see who will bowl for the championship. It is random choice via an app and one of the names it landed on was me. The other person was a guy that is pretty damn good, but he just hasn't been bowling up to his capabilities because he keeps varying his styles instead of just choosing one and sticking with it.

Therefore, despite bowling a mere 114 in game one, a 128 in game two, and a shocking 180 in game three, I emerged victorious by around 50 points. My opponent didn't bowl poorly, I just bowled less poorly because outside of my 3rd game, I was not pleased with any of my scores.

I've been the champion before and was relatively dominant in that position over a year ago but something has happened to me since then and I have actually decreased in ability. At one point I defended the belt for what was at that time a record-setting 7 weeks in a row. However, in the time since then several players have improved a lot, while I have struggled to even maintain some semblance of consistency.

So today we are going to have a real problem I think because the guy who was chosen to bowl against me in the championship bout is one of the best bowlers that DUMBO has ever seen. The guy hails from Norway and according to him 10-pin bowling is one of the things that he would do almost every week for nearly 20 years before coming to Vietnam. He's a nice enough guy and I am not going to fault him for being good... he just might be a little bit "too good" to be bowling with us.

So I was speaking to other people in the league and it is the prevailing opinion that the Norwegian will emerge victorious, it's just a question of by how many points. We were jokingly talking about Vegas betting lines and how a bet on a straight win for me would be at something around +600. That's how little faith anyone in the league has that I can beat this guy.

I'm naturally pessimistic about my own abilities and I don't disagree with any of this sentiment. If we look at the historical records my opponent today bowls an average of 25 points per game better than I do, although these records can't really be trusted since it includes weeks where I bowled like absolute dogshit and didn't feel compelled to even try to fix the problem since no awards were on the line.

I'm just kind of hoping that I can make it entertaining enough that it is worth watching, since the championship lane is where most people's attention is drawn and I would prefer to not embarrass myself. I'm not one to buckle under pressure and it isn't like a big crowd of spectators turn up to see us play. If anyone watches us at all it is normally just for a few frames and then they move on to the arcade behind the bowling area.

I'm not going to roll over though, I will bowl as well as I can and I am going to make him take it from me, I am not going to give up and just let him have it. I do, however, feel as though this championship is kind of like a Cinderella team making it a lot further in the tournament than anyone expected them to though, and I fully expect to lose. I'm just hoping I can lose with grace and have it be by less than 100 points total across all 3 games. If I can keep it under 80 points, it would be right in line with the statistics that we have stored over the years and especially since this Norwegian joined our ranks.

We are expecting a decent crowd today because today is the first week post-Lunar New Year and the prices will be back to normal and the crowds will be non-existent....or so we hope.

If and when I lose I will not be a baby about it and will shake the guy's hand and congratulate him afterwards. Don't count me totally out just yet though because there have been instances in the past where severe underdogs have emerged victorious against statistically better opponents in the past.

So I guess we'll find out in a few hours!