So I went into league play this week with a new plan in mind. I was going to bowl staring from the left side of the lane, roll to the right with a left spin on it. This went down pretty well a number of times but my first game was pretty damn terrible and I was missing a lot of spares as well. The oil just wasn't gelling with me and I could figure it out. I got a lot closer than most other people would on such things but I wasn't as accurate as I wanted to be.
I don't think it was just me though because all of the other players didn't do as well as they normally do as well so perhaps there was something wrong with the way the lanes were prepared that doesn't just affect me.
As you may recall my average is around 130 and on my Tuesday practice session I was able to average 152 across 4 games and I was happy with that. So perhaps you can understand why my 113 that I got in game one was a lot less than I was hoping for.
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The above is the idea and while I was getting close, I was normally just a bit off the mark because I wasn't putting enough rotation on the ball. I wasn't getting a hook so much as I was getting a late "straightening out" and this really isn't that different from bowling straight. I only ended up with a single nasty split though and the straight bowlers were getting a lot more of these than I was. With a spin on the ball even an ill placed ball on a full rack is going to cause more havoc with the pins and things are just going to fall down a lot more for me than a straight bowler will encounter.
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When I am bowling my first ball, i do an inside lane roll which looks awesome when you can pull it off and it has very little chance of guttering or missing the 1/2/3 entirely. One thing that is a lot more likely to happen, at least to me, is something I call a "twofer" but the pros tend to call "hard wood."
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I have no idea about the physics as to how it happens, but if I get left with two pins such as the 2/8 or 3/9 this is a very tough shot for me. It's a tough shot for straight bowlers as well because you have to hit the pin dead on in order to get it to crash into the pin behind it. Hit is just a little bit to the right or left and the pin behind will stay standing. I will only complete this shot about 20% of the time and I was getting an inordinate amount of these left behind in game 1. This is why I ended up with a paltry 113 after the first game. I am not satisfied with such a score.
In my second game I found my mark a bit better and completed a lot of spare pickups and was a lot more pleased with my final score of 158, which was the 2nd highest score of anyone that was there that day. I feel as though this score is more representative of what I am capable of although I did miss a couple of spare pickups in that game as well that made me upset that I missed them. I really should be able to pick up simple non-split spares almost every time that they happen given how often it is that I play this game.
All in all it was a good time and the fact that this typhoon that everyone was so concerned about ended up missing our city entirely was an added bonus. There was some internal squabbling among a couple of our members during the event and I was a bit disappointed about that happening.
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Nobody got a gun pulled on them or anything but there were some people that were in a foul mood for reason unrelated to bowling and they allowed this to enter into the conversation and were downright mean to people that were around them. This cannot be the way. We are a social group first and foremost and we just happen to go bowling. Times like this make me sometimes feel like disbanding the league.
I'm going on a vacation in the month or so and when that happens maybe it will recharge my love for our league get togethers.