With 12 titles under his belt including back-to-back wins in the 2008-2009 Lumber Liquidator's PBA Tour season, Chris Barnes is not looking back as he enters the 2009-2010 season-one in which he hopes to dominate with several titles, another Player of the Year award, and the completion of professional bowling's Grand Slam by adding wins at the World Championship and the USBC Masters to his U.S. Open and Tournament of Champions titles. After spending more time bowling this summer than in previous years, Barnes feels sharper than ever and looks to ride a fast start into the best season of his career.

As someone who has bowled on tour for ten years, does the grind of living out of a suitcase and being on the road all the time get to you after a while?

CB: Yeah, I have always lived out of a suitcase. But with that being said, I hate packing. One thing I think helps on tour is having a roommate that you like and get along with, because as much time as you are on the road in some ways it's almost like a second marriage.

Who has been the best roommate you've had on tour?

CB: Well my first roommate was Bryon Smith, I roomed with him for seven years and we really got along well and he was really supportive when I was a rookie and he had been out there a couple of years. We were both close in age, and a lot of things happened well for me and it didn't necessarily happen that way for him. There were a lot of opportunities for him not to be happy for me, but, you know, he never made me feel bad about bowling well. And at the same time we were both practice guys and we both went out to put in the time to be successful and figure out how to get better. Now, ten years later, Mika and I are also a great fit. We're both married, we both have a couple of kids, and we're out of the party stages, so we both put in the time and practice and the results I think show that.

Do you see yourself bowling for the long haul-maybe way down the line bowling the senior tour-or do you think there will come a time when you will want to pursue off-the-lane ventures?

CB: Well I think it's all relative. You know, I love to compete and as long as I can compete I will do that. At this point, I am not sure I want to depend on the senior tour as a sole income, but I can see myself bowling absolutely for the long haul if my body allows me to do it. My plan is to be in the bowling business, so as those opportunities come, the success of those opportunities will determine how much I bowl.

Many bowlers who have had some success on tour say that nothing could ever quite match up to the feeling of winning their first title. Now that we're just beyond the tenth anniversary of your first title at the 1999 Flagship Open, I am wondering if anything you have done since then has matched the feeling of winning that first title over Rudy Revs?

CB: The US Open. Winning the U.S. Open, winning my first major, throwing a strike in tenth to do it on a really brutally tough condition-I think that's the moment we all dream about. I have had some hits and misses over time, but that was the one that allowed some of the other successes to happen with it.

When a guy practices as much as you do, and has as much success as you have had, how is it possible for any lane condition to still be 'brutal' enough to challenge you?

CB: Well ultimately the lane man always wins if he wants to. The thing about the U.S. Open is it's a perfectly flat 1 to 1 lane condition, so there's no help left and right and there is not much help front to back either. The tiniest imperfections show up on something like that. So with U.S. Open titles and all the things that are riding on that, the adrenaline is where all that practice kicks in and all those big moments are flowing through your body, and if you're not willing to trust, it's hard to make good shots.

Chris, I thought that one of the most extraordinary performances from last season occurred when you shot three consecutive 279 games against Mike DeVaney in match play at the Geico Plastic Ball Championship. DeVaney shot a 769 series and still lost by nearly 70 pins to your 837. What do you remember about that extraordinary match?

CB: You know I had a really good run through there. I think I shot 790 and then 8-something and then the 837. The one thing that all the extreme challenges did is, we preach a lot about versatility, and one of the things that Gordon Vadakin and Pat Henry at Wichita State taught me was versatility. The extreme swing showed a lot of that, and my rev rate's not as high as most other guys' are, but my ability to throw the ball forward and change my ball roll allowed me to hook it more, so it turned back the clock to when I actually used to hook it more than a lot of guys. Back then there just weren't a lot of guys with 500 RPMs. Now they are a dime a dozen. Before it was Rudy and Robert Smith. That was really about it. Now we have 600 RPMs with Jason and Osku and Cassidy Schaub. So it took the ability to soften your ball speed and make the ball roll, it allowed me to get left of all of them. I think that's why I won on that extreme swing, because of all the time I spent taking that range of tools and trying to expand that range every year, and it paid off in a couple of tournaments last year.

One thing Belmonte mentioned when he did some Xtra Frame commentary while you were shooting those amazing scores was that when you're using plastic equipment as opposed to the high tech equipment of today you can actually strike for a longer period of time because the plastic balls do not react as harshly to break down in the lane pattern as high tech equipment does. Would you agree with that?

CB: Yeah, well the thing that reactives do is they do have a much higher response to breakdowns, and you don't always get much warning with reactive balls, so you see a lot of people making educated guesses with moves. With plastic it's a lot easier to see those changes coming, and they happen much slower. You can count on getting to bowl 8, 9, 10 frames or maybe even a game-and-a-half and not have to move a whole lot. I think I maybe moved four boards during a four-game match. Transition still happens, it just happens differently. And it happens slower.

A debate flourished on the PBA message boards after that in which people felt that your performance at the plastic ball championship confirmed to any naysayers out there that you do not need today's high-tech equipment to bowl great scores and win on tour. Did you feel that your scores at that tournament silenced any of your critics?

CB: Well, it's not up to me to decide what makes my critics happy. I have some well-deserved criticisms and some that are probably not as well deserved. I would like to think I can succeed in any given environment. I grew up throwing rubber and plastic and transitioned to urethane and now reactives. And probably one of my skills that serves me well on tour is that I process the info fairly well from a lot of help from Rick Benoit, and I understand ball reaction. So whether it's plastic or urethane, whatever it is, I think I am pretty good. It's flattering to think that I can succeed no matter what equipment I have, but I am still pretty ball dependent, and there is no doubt over the last few years that the bowling balls that Columbia has put out have had a lot to do with the success I have had. Last year you saw some different companies have success that did not have success in the past, and some that have been very successful the last few years struggled for the first time in a while. I think Columbia has the widest range of equipment out there, so that has been a huge help, especially years like last year when there was not nearly as much head oil. I still had options that allowed me to compete and have success out there. I think we're on our way to reestablishing Columbia as the best brand in high performance bowling balls. We've just had some really top notch stuff over the last three years, and you know, I like to think I have a fair amount of my own tools, but bowling balls are the biggest tools.

It's really to your credit to admit that because there seems to be some fear out there about being perceived as ball dependent in our era of high-tech equipment, but you're conceding that at least to some degree.

CB: Yeah, I have always had pretty good equipment and there have been times when I was fighting against it, but I don't think it's any coincidence that the last couple of years have been good as far as titles and shows in an era when Columbia's brand has been successful.

You mentioned times when you were fighting your own equipment, and it seemed last season that in the single-game elimination matches you bowled on TV there was always that one split, that single open frame that made things tough for you. Did you get that sense yourself when you were bowling in those single elimination matches this season?

CB: Oh yes without a doubt. My strength definitely relies on the long haul where I get the chance to make decisions and I get to use all the bowling balls I have at my disposal and as the lanes transition I get to move quicker and put the right combination together faster. In those sprints it does work against what is my strength now. But the other side of that is with all that time in practice, I am a control guy, you feel the adrenaline going and you want to control the shot and make it do something. Mark Baker, who I have been working some camps with, we talked at the break after my slow start to the season. We worked on a few things and I bowled Bill O'Neill on that show in Indy, and I had a pretty good early lead even though it was pretty ugly, and at the end I needed to throw a strike and I hit my target but I just whiffed it at the bottom, which means there are some timing issues and that my body is out of position. I called him up immediately and I said 'Did you see that? Those shots have to get fixed. What's going on?' Maybe not in such grand language, but he called me back about a half hour later and that's when we talked about it that there were some things I was doing early on in my approach that were getting my body out of position, and I was making shots where I didn't necessarily miss my target, I was just missing it at the bottom. Over my career there have been several shots that have gone light. I think they are good target-wise but they just don't have much on them, whether it's been a half-7, a half 10 or a scout-ten or worse. Those were the shots I was trying to eliminate, and those were the things I worked on. The next week I won, and I kept working on it and the week after that I won again. And in Long Island, really through poor preparation on my part, I missed the next show by I think less than 100 pins, and then when I needed to strike to beat Mike Scroggins at the U.S. Open and I stone 8 on a pretty tough pattern and I leave a ten on the next one-if it was going to creep in there that's when it was going to creep in. Mark identified the problem for me, and I think moving forward my TV record is going to improve pretty dramatically.

You mentioned there was some poor preparation before that tournament in Long Island-can you elaborate?

CB: Yeah, the lanes were really hard that week and it was one of those two-pattern tournaments, and the center in Long Island, that center hooks brutally early, which is always tough for me because I have an end-over-end roll anyway. I had a feeling the lanes were going to be tougher that last night, and I knew I needed to get down there and work on a few options ball-wise to give me a chance to go across that house and be competitive, and I just lost track of time. It was a silly mistake, maybe I was tired, whatever, but there is not really an excuse for it. So instead of spending half an hour before the block looking at some options, I ended up spending about 5 to 10 minutes and I just didn't have it figured out in time. I didn't know what point to go maybe I would not have ended up figuring out some options if I had more time, but history tells me that I might have figured out something better than I did. I bowled really poorly and the lanes were just hard for everyone, and I still had a shot at making the show.

Is there anything left for you to prove, Chris?

CB: I am not so much into the proving thing anymore. A few years back I spent enough time kicking my own butt, and I started to enjoy the ride a little more. You still have to put in the time and you're still working towards that goal, but you enjoy the good things more. I had it wired backwards earlier in my career where the bad things were really frustrating to me and with the good things, it was like 'Well, that's what's supposed to happen.' So now I take more joy out of the special weeks and don't beat myself up so much on the bad ones. The bad part has definitely changed for me. I don't know that I have to prove a lot, but I have goals. I would like to win another Player of the Year, and the big one would be to win the Grand Slam. I have a couple seconds in there and some opportunities, but in those tournaments-one at the Masters and two at the World Championships now-you know, the scoring against me I think has been over 250 on those shows, so on those patterns if a guy shoots 250 you're going to have a tough go.

What was your reaction when you heard that Brian Voss and Amleto Monaceli were going to rejoin he tour this season?

CB: I was happy for them. I have known them both a long time, and honestly watching Amleto at the U.S. Open, there is no doubt of his physical talent, and he is probably still to this day in better shape than anyone else on tour-which is pretty sick. I mean the guy is unbelievable. And from that standpoint I was pleased for them, and I think he deserves to be on tour. I feel that our exemption system needs to be improved a little bit so it takes care of the guys that won a lot and are fan favorites. I feel that each title should count as an exemption year-and I was suggesting that when I was winning one title a year, so it wasn't helping me out any. But these are the guys that the PBA has invested in, that have won major titles and been on TV a lot. It doesn't make sense to lose them the very next year. There is time to ride out into the sunset, sure, but Voss obviously still has a lot of skills. I personally think that his struggles out there had a lot to do with the tools he had. I just think he got stuck with a couple bowling balls in a year when they did not match up very well, and I think he battled through injuries. But I expect he will have a good year this year. At the Geico Plastic Ball Championship last season you saw his skills at throwing the ball a little bit slower and creating a heavier roll and hooking the ball differently, not just swing it out there and hooking the ball in the last 15 feet, which has become the way to play the game today. He starts hooking the ball at 20 feet and the ball hooks the last 40 feet and he can create things that the guys that throw it too hard all the time can't do.

What are your goals for the upcoming season?

CB: First of all, to get off to a better start. I have had poor starts over the last few years. As we've gone around and been more successful we have done more clinics and trade shows in the off season that didn't really have a whole lot to do with actually bowling. So I have gotten to bowl more this summer, so I think I will be a little sharper from the beginning this season, and put together a full-year campaign that includes a major win-one of those two I don't have-and maybe two or three other titles. I would like to have a dominating season.