He's Rolling Right Along -- Pro Bowler Danny Wiseman Is Happy With His Lot In Life

Although the accommodations - a travel trailer parked in the Skyway Park Bowl parking lot - hardly seems appropriate for a defending champion, his wife and two pets, Danny Wiseman isn't complaining.

In fact, Wiseman, the winner of last year's Seattle Open professional bowling tournament, said he couldn't be happier with his situation. He'll take a bowling-center parking lot over a campground anytime.

"I like it better when we stay in a parking lot because I can get up whenever I want and just go into the bowling center," said Wiseman, 24, yesterday as traffic rolled along Renton Avenue South outside Skyway Park. "I'm right there. I mean, I don't have to run around and fight traffic."

Today, Wiseman began competing with 159 other bowlers eager to supplant him as Seattle Open champion and win the $18,000 first prize. Qualifying rounds will reduce the field to the top 24 for match play tomorrow night and Friday. The top five will advance to Saturday's nationally televised finals.

Wiseman, a winner of four PBA events in less than three full years on the tour, likes his chances, but not just because he won at Skyway Park last year. The ability to adapt to conditions makes him a threat anytime, he says.

"For some guys, their ball roll matches a certain finish on the lanes," Wiseman said. "For other guys, it's a matter of what pattern (ball route) they put down.

"And for other guys it doesn't matter. They feel they can hit anything that's put out there. That's the way I feel."

Wiseman said he can't hook a ball as well as others, but he said those who throw big hooks have trouble along the gutters.

"I can kind of hook it, but they can't go straight like I can," Wiseman said. "To me, it's just being versatile."

The roots of Wiseman's versatility are deep. He began bowling by using tennis balls in the basement of his Baltimore home when he was 4. By age 7, he was carrying a 119 average in a league; by 8 it was 128.

"It seemed like it (average) progressed about 10 pins every year until a certain age," Wiseman said.

Sadly, the person most influential in getting Wiseman started on a bowling career - his father, Al - is battling terminal cancer. Danny said that situation both motivates and distracts him.

"He told me he doesn't want me to stop doing this," Wiseman said. "But on the other hand I want to be with him."

Al got to see his son bowl a month ago in the final event of the PBA winter schedule, the Firestone Tournament of Champions in Fairlawn, Ohio. Wiseman finished third.

"I wish I could have won it for him," Wiseman said.

Third place was worth $24,000 and boosted Wiseman's earnings for 16 tournaments this year to $58,510. Combined with an endorsement contract with a bowling-ball manufacturer, the season has been lucrative even though he has yet to win in 1992.

But money, insists Wiseman, is not what drives him.

"The money is nice, but I bowl because I love the game," he said. "I mean this is crazy traveling around like this. It's nuts. If anybody does it for the money, they're fooling themselves. The money is nice, but we're not making millions out here."

A trailer in the Skyway parking lot supports Wiseman's words. Sharing the "fifth wheel" with him are his wife of four years, Lisa, a cat named Bob and a dog named Fifi. Yesterday, there were 30 bowling balls in the living room.

"It's fine," Wiseman said. "You've got your home on the road. You have everything with you."

NOTES -- In winning two tournaments last year, at Skyway Park and Richmond Heights, Mo., Wiseman came from fifth place at the start of the stepladder finals in both. At Skyway, he eliminated Curtis Odom 256-215, Del Ballard Jr. 219-215, Eric Forkel 259-221 and Dave Ferraro 203-174. -- The field here includes David Ozio, PBA player of the year in 1991, and the only two-time winners this season - Forkel and Marc McDowell. The top Seattle-area hope is Bothell's Bruce Hamilton, who earned his first PBA title at Peoria, Ill., earlier this year. -- ABC-TV, which is showing the PBA tour for the 30th consecutive season, will televise Saturday's finals. The broadcast will begin at noon but will be shown locally on tape delay at 3 p.m. (KOMO-TV, Channel 4). Chris Schenkel will call the action, as he has done since 1962. ----------------------------

SEATTLE OPEN -- Where: Skyway Park Bowl, 11819 Renton Ave. S. -- When: Today through Saturday. -- Schedule, tickets: Tonight - second round of qualifying, at 4 and 7:15, $8; tomorrow - third round of qualifying, at 9 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., $8; match play, 6:45 p.m., $9; Friday - match-play sessions at 11 a.m. and 6:15 p.m., $9; Saturday - finals, noon, $20. -- Defending champ - Danny Wiseman, Baltimore.