Walter Ray Williams Jr. got to see Federal Way’s hot spots up close and personal Thursday.

After conducting two sold-out clinics to amateur bowlers from around the area at Secoma Lanes, Williams was able to get in 18 holes at the Twin Lakes Golf and Country Club later in the day.

Needless to say, he was living “The Federal Way Life” Thursday. But that’s just what happens when you are one of the best bowlers ever to live.

Williams is in town for the weekend as the guest of honor at the Professional Bowlers Association Northwest Secoma Lanes Open. He will be competing in the tournament today and tomorrow in Federal Way. The tournament will include close to 100 regional bowlers from around the Pacific Northwest. Competition kicks off at 8 a.m. both days.

“You guys have a beautiful bowling center here,” Williams said Thursday. “It will be nice to get a little competition in before the tour starts in a couple weeks.”

The PBA Tour is old hat for Williams. During his 25-year career, the Florida resident has won more titles (45) and more money (just shy of $4 million) than anyone else in the tour’s history. He was recently voted the second greatest bowler in the 50-year history of the PBA, behind Tacoma’s Earl Anthony.

“Earl Anthony is still the greatest,” Williams said. “I consider him the greatest player of all time.”

But Williams is no where close to being done. During last year’s PBA Tour, he won his 45th title at the Lake County Indiana Golden Anniversary Championship after winning twice in 2008.

Williams was introduced to the game of bowling as an 11-year-old in California during a horseshoe pitching competition.

“Somebody at the horseshoe contest took us bowling,” Williams said. “I really enjoyed it, but I come from a large family and really didn’t bowl much after that.”

But he got back into the sport during his sophomore year in high school when he was bowling between 15 to 20 games a week.

“I just kept getting better from there and I turned pro right after I graduated from college,” Williams said.

The rest is history.

During his unbelievable PBA career, Williams has bowled 76 career 300 games during competition, including four in one tournament in 1993. He has made the most number of career television appearances (172) and has won at least one PBA tour title in a record 16 consecutive seasons. He is a member of the PBA Hall of Fame and has won the PBA Player of the Year honor a record six times.

But Williams doesn’t have the beer-swilling, chain-smoking pedigree that you would think a professional bowler has. He graduated from Cal-Poly Pomona in 1984 with a degree in physics and uses his smarts to his advantage on the bowling alley. In fact, he wrote his senior thesis at Cal-Poly on the physics of a bowling ball rolling down a lane.

“I don’t know that it really helps,” Williams said. “But I do have kind of a different viewpoint than a lot of other bowlers. I definitely use statistics more than anything.”

This is where Williams kind of lost me and proved why he is the greatest living bowler in the world and why I have trouble breaking 100. I don’t use statistics at all when I head out to Secoma Lanes.

The only things I use when I go bowling is a ball that somewhat fits my fingers, shoes that 5,000 other people have worn in the last 10 years and a lot of money buying beer served in a plastic cup.

Speaking of community bowling balls at the alley, where do they come from?

I have larger than normal hands and there are some balls that I can’t even get my fingers in. Who uses these balls, Paul Bunyan?

But back to Walter Ray Williams Jr.

Despite being one of the two best bowlers in the history of the sport, Williams is still not revered like stars of other sports or even like bowling stars of the past.

“Bowling is down a tiny bit than what it used to be,” he said. “Back in the ‘80s, there was only three networks and the ratings on TV were a lot better. But now there is a lot more to watch on TV and the ratings are down a little bit.”

Williams says for some reason bowling hasn’t clicked with the mainstream sports media and that means professional bowlers aren’t competing for the big-dollar pay days because sponsors aren’t pouring their money into the sport.

“That’s just the position we’ve been in for the last couple years,” Williams said. “We’ll see what happens.”

For now, Williams will be rolling strikes in Federal Way.