On Saturday, May 21, Mel’s Lone Star Lanes Manager Doug Patton was officially inducted into the Texas State Bowling Hall of Fame.
“[I was] humbled,” Doug Patton told Hello Georgetown. “Honored. Couldn’t believe it. You know, I just think about to being a little boy at six bowling and who would have thunk that I’d be in the state bowling hall of fame.”
Patton’s career started at a young age when his dad, who was president of the local bowling club, would take him to the local eight lane bowling alley.
“I grew up in Boerne,” Patton said. “There’s still an eight lane bowling alley there that I grew up in. It’s a club, owned by the members, called the Boerne Turn Verine. My dad was president of the club, so he would be there a lot and he would take me there four, five nights a week, when I was six through seventeen, eighteen. I even worked there starting at age thirteen working in the back on the pin setters…and I fell in love with it…walked into the bowling center at six and here I am fifty-nine, still there, just in a different role now.”
Patton’s bowling career has been marked a wide variety of accomplishments including 31 perfect games, honor scores, tournament titles, and state and national titles, to name a few. Patton also said his time at the lanes has also included some tough lessons.
“[I] learned a lot about getting back up off the turf when you have failure,” Patton said. “I had a chance that year at Nationals in 1989 to claim the victory, they call it the Eagle, when you win the title at Nationals. I got up in the 10th frame, I was on 10 strikes in a row, and I was playing fairly close to the gutter…I hit the gutter…it cost me first place, dropped from first to third, so yeah, I didn’t sleep very much that night, but got back up, kept going.”
He did keep going. Throughout Patton’s 50 plus year career, he’s accomplished a lot and now can add being inducted into the Texas State Bowling Hall of Fame to that list.
“It just threw me back to my childhood, the love of the game and what kept me going in the game all these years, the love of my mom and my dad, my dad drove me around to every tournament there ever was, the love of my doubles partner Martin, who’s no longer with us.”
Doug Patton is one of four people to be inducted into the hall of fame, and one of over 160 people to be inducted since 1965. While his competitive bowling days are largely behind him, he says he still spends plenty of time bowling.
“Organizing leagues…organizing open play times, assisting in setting the rates and specials, and recruiting new business, and nurturing current business, making sure folks are having a good time while they’re here,” Patton said. “Kind of being a goodwill ambassador, that’s a big part of my job too.”
A goodwill ambassador not just for Mel’s Lone Star Lanes, but now also for bowling in Texas.
“Just know that bowling is a sport that anybody can do,” Patton said. “Nobody sits on the bench in bowling. You can do it when you’re six, you can do it when you’re 96, you just have to adapt a little bit. It’s just a beautiful, social and friendly competitive game.”
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