Power is the name of the game in modern bowling. The obsession with rev rates is sometimes contested by older generations, but it is undoubtedly justified. People love to say that spares win tournaments, but you can’t average 240 without striking a whole bunch.
That’s why most young players first learn how to maximize their rev rate and ball speed, then later how to harness it. The obligatory golf analogy would be learning how to drive 300 yards before learning to putt at an elite level.
In that regard, Francois Lavoie is an anomaly. The one-hander is a throwback of sorts: a low-rev player with a slight hitch in his swing. Most modern one-handers sacrifice a fractional amount of accuracy in favor of maximizing power — think of EJ Tackett, BJ Moore, or Kris Prather — but Lavoie builds upon his greatest strength: finesse. He paints lines like an artist and is a connoisseur of lane-play and ball motion.
The 28-year-old has won at every stage of his career. In college, he won the Intercollegiate Singles title in 2014 against a loaded field — the telecast featured Chris Via, Nate Garcia, and Perry Crowell — and anchored a stacked Wichita State squad en route to the 2015 Intercollegiate Team Championship title. He earned gold medals at the 2017 World Bowling Championship Masters and 2019 PABCON Singles.
Lavoie broke onto the PBA tour in a major way back in 2016. He became the second international player to win the U.S. Open and fried a perfect 300 game in the semifinal match; it was just the 26th ever televised 300 game and first in U.S. Open history. He later took home the Shark Championship and secured the 2016 Harry Golden Rookie of the Year award. The Canadian repeated as U.S. Open champion in 2019 and added a second televised 300 to his resume at the 2020 PBA Playoffs, cementing his status as a force to be reckoned with on the tour.
This past Sunday, Lavoie aimed to capture his third career major title at the Tournament of Champions. To even make the show, Lavoie had to win a roll-off against Tom Smallwood, who set the single-day scoring record earlier in qualifying.
The match began ugly — through four frames, just a single strike had been thrown. Both players were playing relatively straight, sliding around 20 and targetting 9-10 down-lane. In the fifth frame, Lavoie made a massive adjustment, jumping roughly 20 boards left on the right lane. Interestingly, he did make the same move on the left lane. Those bold decisions in the midst of a win-or-go-home match perfectly exemplified Lavoie’s brilliance and he used a big back half to defeat Smallwood 218-163.
On the TOC telecast, Lavoie faced a gauntlet of major champions. He earned the fifth seed for the stepladder, meaning he would have to win four consecutive matches to win the title. First, he outdueled 13-time PBA champion and fellow Wichita State alum, Sean Rash, 225-209. Rash struggled mightily and Lavoie showed no mercy.
His next opponent, two-hander Jesper Svensson, is arguably the most powerful player on tour. He boasts a rev rate of over 570 and throws messengers like he’s paid on commission. He’s the youngest TOC champion ever and is the only player in PBA history to reach five tour titles before the age of 21. But Lavoie was not fazed, defeating the Swedish lefty 236-201.
The last two competitors in his path represented Lavoie’s stylistic antithesis. Two-handers Jason Belmonte and Anthony Simonsen can do literally anything with a bowling ball. They are two of the most accomplished players of all-time; Belmonte is the G.O.A.T. and a record 13-time major champion, while top-seeded Simonsen is the youngest bowler ever to win two major titles. Belmo and Simo are the current and future faces of the sport (more on them later this week).
But on these conditions, Lavoie’s lower rev-rate played to his advantage. Belmonte played over an arrow left of Lavoie; as the match progressed, he struggled to string strikes. The Australian said via an Instagram story that he tried to use a stronger ball to control the unexpectedly angular down-lane motion, but the choice was ultimately unsuccessful as Lavoie won the match 220-194.
Simonsen, likely trying to avoid repeating Belmonte’s miscalculation, made an uber-aggressive decision to play up the lane with a vintage urethane ball. The move was disastrous, highlighted by a brutal (yet objectively hilarious) pocket 8-10 leave in the fourth frame. Simonsen immediately jumped on top of Lavoie’s line and threw three consecutive strikes — a testament to his tremendous talent — but his comeback attempt was derailed by a split in the eighth frame.
Lavoie defeated Simonsen 233-187, securing his third major title and fifth overall. Only Belmonte has more major titles since 2016. (He has seven!)
The stark contrast of Lavoie’s game in comparison to fellow stars Belmonte and Simonsen is akin to Stephen Curry’s uniqueness in basketball. If you lined up the best basketball players in the world, Curry is the obvious outlier. LeBron James and Kevin Durant each have over six inches and fifty pounds on Curry. James and Durant’s basketball prowess is readily apparent to anyone with two eyes — they were put on this earth to play basketball.
Curry, on the other hand, is a smaller guard who relies on his transcendent shooting touch, unparalleled ball-handling, immense basketball IQ, and relentless off-ball movement. There is nothing inherently wrong with those skills, but they require a bit of nuance to fully appreciate. When he made the leap into superstardom in 2014-15, many were skeptical of how Curry’s play-style could translate to winning. Who’s this kid shooting eight three-pointers a game? That’s not going to win in the playoffs.
As we all know, Curry made a mockery of his critics, revolutionizing the sport and becoming one of the game’s all-time greats. The Bay Area icon has won two league-MVP awards and was the first-ever unanimous selection in 2016. He’s orchestrated one of the greatest dynasties in team sports history, leading Golden State to a record 73-win season, five straight NBA Finals appearances, and three championships. (He’s also the rightful 2015 Finals MVP.)
Now you won’t see Lavoie hit the shimmy after a big shot like Chef Curry, but the two succeed at the highest level of their games because of their exceptional fundamentals and attention to detail. If someone who had never seen professional bowling watched the TOC finalists practice, no reasonable person would have picked Lavoie to win unless they were hopped up on Timbits. Even though they faced the exact same road to the title, FOXBet listed Lavoie’s odds at +1100 and Rash’s at +800.
Canadians are stereotypically known for excessive politeness and Lavoie definitely gives off that vibe, at least to casual viewers. But it’s quite clear that once the lights turn on, he’s a ruthless competitor. You can’t win five matches in a row against the best in the world without being one, eh? Lavoie doesn’t give a damn about how many revs you have or how far you can loft the ball — when the stakes are highest and the conditions are toughest, you can bet he will be in contention.