Ben Carson vs. Reporter: How the Candidate Crushed Me at Skee Ball

ABC News discovers a skee-ball shark lurking in Iowa.

ByABC News
January 11, 2016, 1:29 PM

—FORT DODGE, Iowa -- It’s a busy day for Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, but he did manage to take time out of his busy schedule to play a game of skee-ball.

Carson, whose routine is to shoot a game of pool before GOP debates, decided to accept my skee-ball challenge after a morning town hall at Fort Frenzy, an arcade in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Carson, who predicted he would lose the game, won by a landslide with a score of 31,000 to 18,000.

“I like it, this is good,” Carson said as he was winning the game. “This is getting me fired up for the rest of the day.”

PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson plays skee ball with ABC News reporter Katherine Faulders at Fort Frenzy, an arcade in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Jan. 11, 2016.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson plays skee ball with ABC News reporter Katherine Faulders at Fort Frenzy, an arcade in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Jan. 11, 2016.

His trick to the win? The follow through.

“I like this game,” Carson said, after sinking both a 5,000- and 4,000-point shot. “I’ll tell you the key; follow through, follow through.”

Carson, who is polling in 4th place at 7 percent in Iowa, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released today, will make three more campaign stops today in the state.

“The strategy is very much what we’re doing here today,” Carson, 64, said of his strategy for trying to win the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. “Getting out in front of people, letting them hear you and, you know, what it’s all about is getting to know the candidates.”