“Shooting a 3,” as experienced alley-men call it, means obtaining absolute perfection. It is the bowler’s equivalent of a baseball pitcher’s perfect game or a golfer’s hole-in-one.

It requires throwing a dozen straight strikes without once losing concentration, without once experiencing bad luck, without once melting under mounting pressure.

But for Salisbury’s Todd Masingo, 300 games are not fantasy. Masingo is so proficient in his sport that when he didn’t shoot a perfect game over the last three years, it qualified as a “dry spell.”

The dry spell is now officially history. Masingo pounded the pins at Woodleaf Lanes last Wednesday night, shooting the first “3” since the Jake Alexander Boulevard business installed new synthetic lanes last August.

It was — get this — the 14th time Masingo has accomplished the feat.

“People say it gets easier each time,” says Masingo, who is pro shop manager at Creekside Lanes in Winston-Salem. “But that’s bull. It’s never easy.

“The physical part is hard enough. It doesn’t take much for your arm-swing to go haywire. And the mental part — the focus that is required — is even tougher than the physical part.”

Masingo, 32, started bowling before he started school and carries an impressive average of 227. He bowls in regional tournaments on weekends (ranging from West Virginia to Florida) and says he’s currently 26th on the point list. He has sponsors for upcoming national events in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Toledo, Ohio.

“There’s some big prize money in those,” Masingo says. “The one in Toledo in February has $36,000 for first.”

To stay sharp, Masingo bowls on Tuesdays in Winston and in the Wednesday Night Trio League at Woodleaf Lanes.

Last Wednesday was an unusual night from the start for Masingo. His friendly opponents included his brother, Steve, and father, Frank. Best of all, his mother, who has had some recent back trouble, was in the audience.

Masingo rolled a 212 in his first effort of the night, a heck of a score for most, but a disappointment for him.

But he started strong in the second game, rolling five no-doubt-about-it strikes. Then in the sixth frame, he got a break, “tripping” the 3-pin to keep his string alive.

By the sixth, Masingo was “walking” — circling around and talking to people between balls, trying to keep from getting antsy.

By the eighth frame, as the strikes kept coming, he started to get the feeling he was going to break the drought.

“Every time you pick up a ball, you want to shoot the 3,” he said. “That’s always your goal. But they just don’t come very often.”

He kept it going through the ninth and 10th. Then he struck with his first bonus ball in the 10th. Now, there was one ball to go to achieve some history.

Masingo delivered.

“I was confident and threw that last one real nice,” he said. “I was impressed with that one. I labeled ‘em all.”

Everyone in the place was impressed. But one person was most impressed of all. That was Mom, who hadn’t seen any of his previous 13 rounds of perfection.

Masingo still had one game to go, and amazingly enough, even after all the handshakes and laughter and congratulations, he regained his mental sharpness sufficiently enough to open with five straight strikes.

He finally misfired in the sixth, eventually settling for a 216 and a spectacular 728 series.

But it will be a long while before anyone who was at Woodleaf Lanes on the 16th forgets Masingo’s magic.