that match against Jurek. “It’s going to be a long ride home if he doesn’t win this one.”
But by the time Fagan hit the road
AUDIO INTERVIEW Mike Fagan dis- cusses success on the PBA Tour and his long journey to stardom.
“There were a few seasons in a row
there where I just wasn’t going anywhere,” Fagan says. “I was making cuts but I wasn’t really the player I wanted to be.” Maybe not. But that player he wanted
“THE MONEY WILL SPEND,” FAGAN SAYS. “THE TITLES WILL LAST, THOUGH.”
to be would taunt him now and then. That is the player who converted a 7-10 split in the second-to-last game of match play at the 2006 U.S. Open to squeak onto the show by three pins. It is the player who opened that show with the front four on the tour’s toughest pattern, the one who converted the 6-7- 10 split in the 10th frame to defeat Robert Smith that day. But Fagan also is the player who
whiffed the headpin in a rolloff at the 2009 Shark Championship to hand Jack Jurek his first PBA Tour title in 14 years, the one who toiled on tour for eight seasons before winning his first singles title. “Fagan drove here from Long Island, about a 12-13-hour drive,” play-by-play announcer Rob Stone remarked during
after watching another player vanquish him en route to a title, his entire career might have felt like a long, lonely ride. With 13 hours to think about why he found himself eight seasons deep in a pro bowling career with just a lone doubles title to show for it, only Fagan knows what he chalked it up to. Maybe those fidgety fans and cameras
on the TV set, how hard it can be to pretend they’re not there. Maybe those times that player he wanted to be didn’t show up when he needed him — an untimely split here, a weak 10 there. Maybe the same thing anybody points to as a cause for struggle — money. “I think that’s what was holding me back four or five years ago,” Fagan explains. “I was worried about trying to make a living, trying to make money. And when the time came, I wasn’t performing.” Maybe the thing that distinguishes
that Michael Fagan from the one he became last season, when he won his first major at the USBC Masters and made the show at two others, is that now he realizes what every great player comes to know: Money is a more fickle mistress than glory. “The money will spend,” Fagan says.
“The titles will last, though.” Titles may last longer than money, but the hunger it takes to win them is always asking for more. The Michael Fagan
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