Saturday - October 24, 2015

good practie for me

As a team, we didn’t do so great at Cheap League last night, winning only one game for 2 points, 2-5.

OTOH, I bowled pretty well. The alley bought themselves a new lane cleaning machine this season, and it seems to be set to lay a pattern several feet longer. So down and in balls go down, but they don’t go in so much. In other words, the lanes won’t hook. I was able to beat that a bit, tucking in my pinky finger (this hurts until you get used to it!!) and holding my index finger a bit wider. That put a little more lateral spin on the ball without throwing it faster, as Low And Slow seemed to be working. A slight flip of the hand on the release, snap, and a big Ole! follow through, and the ball would run down the 8 board, flair in towards the pocket, and just be starting to turn when it hit. Plenty of strikes. If I threw to the inside or put too much hand on it, it would go Brooklyn, but that worked pretty well too. So it wasn’t a magic scoring night for me, I did manage a 635 series going over 200 on every game. Which is a nice bit of consistency I’m happy with.

One of these days I might get a new ball. I dunno. This one is going into it’s 3rd full season, with 3 summer seasons on it too. I’ve had it steamed and resurfaced once, but these reactive resin balls just absorb the oil and never really let it all go. They just get weaker as time goes by. 

Posted by Drew458     on 10/24/2015 at 06:33 AM   
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   Saturday - September 19, 2015

Another Team Of One

We went down fighting last night, 2-5. Their side had 2 decent bowlers, a fair bowler, and a ringer. Oh come on. R has a 205 book average? In what universe? I’ve known him forever, and I’ve personally seen him throw a dozen 300 games. And while his teammates dawdled about, he just kept dropping the strike hammer frame after frame, game after game. And then “accidentally’ blowing the 10th frame if his team was untouchably ahead. Otherwise he threw a 256 but we out rolled that.

Beats me why these guys want to hang out in a podunk league like this. No glory in it for them. No money either. I don’t get it.

Whatever. Get my balls clean, and try again next week.

Hey, looks like Europe is finally waking up, huh? Now that it’s nearly too late. All it took was the rioting hordes literally at the gates before they cottoned onto what we’ve been saying for years. Ha, even that marshmallow waffle Bill O’Reilly on Fox News is straight up calling this a “Muslim Invasion”. No shit. And to fend off an invasion, you break out the tanks and the guns. And have at it. Charles Martel would be proud. And that’s the real talking point: It’s time to fight. To the death.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/19/2015 at 05:12 AM   
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   Saturday - September 12, 2015

off to a good start

Yes indeed, how wonderful it is to bowl with a full team. Especially against your arch rivals who have a vacancy this season. So far. Vacancies can’t come through when the pressure is on.

We were up against the team that bested us left and right last season, and gave us lots of trouble in summer league as well, which they won. Except they’re down one bowler right now. So even though their ace anchor was beyond hot, throwing 8 in a row for a 266, we kept up a regular barrage of marks and took them down in the first game by about 48 pins. Sweet. So sweet. Their anchor couldn’t bring that kind of power to Game 2, and their other two rollers were kind of in plod mode, so we dropped the hammer on them and took the second game by 75. They did their best to rally, but we were in fightin’ mode. It was pretty much heads up bowling anyway - they got a whole 4 pins from us - and we trade the lead back and forth several times. And I know they’re a Closer Team, always pulling it out in the 10th. So we started our own closing a frame or two earlier, and went into the 10th with a turkey, a double, an open, and a spare. And we did our jobs right. So we took the third game as well, plus the wood. For a 7-0 wipeout.

Nice way to start a new season. I’m going to be the anchor this year. Yikes. And I threw all night without a brace, working on my bare handed release, which is doing fine. No great scores for me, though I did break 200 with one game. 

Posted by Drew458     on 09/12/2015 at 08:59 AM   
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   Thursday - August 27, 2015

By One Point

Well, that’s it for Summer Fun League.

We actually came together as a team last night. It was quite impressive. We bowled the same old team again, for the third week in a row. BORING. But instead of being the cranky old folks who got pushed around by some snot nosed kids, we did the pushing this time.  Ok, their team has a noob too, a guy who always uses the same squatted down approach but hasn’t figured out yet that it’s his hand position and follow through that actually aim the ball. So, with his wobbly paw, he throws the 7 pin or the left gutter, the 10 pin or the right gutter, and sometimes the ball goes down the middle to strike or hit a bunch of pins. And he hasn’t figured it out. Not my problem. When our noob started doing his lazy crap again, mindlessly tossing the ball down the lane to hit or miss by divine provenance, I took him aside. And I was pissed. “Listen up noob, I’m sick of your bullshit. You’ve had the entire summer to learn to bowl, and now it’s time to come through for the team. Pay attention to your body, swing straight, and start knocking down some pins. Otherwise I’m going to pimp slap the shit out of you with this steel hand brace I wear.” I guess I got his attention, because that was the last gutter ball he threw. He went on to bowl 15 to 20 over for each game. Well done.

Anchor girl and I both got in attack mode and ate up the lanes, throwing the deuce or better. I took the high game with a 226 and she wasn’t far behind me with a 221.  When there was a drama situation - the scoring computer failed for our lanes only, shutting off the alley and the overhead monitors halfway through the first game, and then finally coming on with a blank screen ... I held a little meeting and talked them all through it; not our fault, let the employees find the solution, don’t get worried get angry or just let it slide, let someone else deal with it for once, blahblahblah. And that worked.  Now let’s go kick some ass.

End result: we destroyed them. Took the first game by 45, took the second game by 78, took the third game by 118. And by taking all 7 points, we pushed them over the cliff so that they fell from 3rd to 6th, and we bubbled up to 3rd, missing 2nd place by a single point. Nice. So we didn’t win the league, but we did get that little bit of extra cash in our prize money envelope. First place paid $35 per person, second paid $32.50, third paid $30. Summer League is a loss leader; the prize money is a joke because the weekly dues are just barely more than linage.

Winter Fun League starts on 9/11. 

Posted by Drew458     on 08/27/2015 at 05:04 AM   
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   Thursday - August 20, 2015

going down the gutters

Skunked again in Summer League. We lost the final week of regular bowling last week, 2-5, then had to face the same team again in the semi-finals. But hey, we were looking forward to trouncing them because the league bylaws said “no subs in the finals”. Or so we thought. Which means they couldn’t bring in a ringer, and would have to field whoever on their team who actually showed up.

But when we were getting ready for the warm up, who do we see but our anchor’s daughter, surprise, logging in for the other team. But she’s a sub! Oh God, time for the drama llamas.  So we take the rules to the boss man, and he explains that what he meant was, no new subs in the finals; all of them have to have an established average by that point. Right. No bowling for averages (something you do the first couple weeks of the season) during the last 2 weeks of the season. Makes sense. Right. Except that isn’t how he wrote it. Difference between a semi-colon and a period, different sentence structure as well. I hate having to play Constitutional Scholar at bowling league because people can’t write a coherent sentence or two to express themselves properly. Fine, so let the girl play. She’s a nice young woman, and a pretty good bowler to boot. But it really cranked her mom. Score one for our opponents, total psyche out before we even rolled a ball.

And then my team dove headfirst into the mire. All night long. Hey, I rolled my average or a little better, so don’t blame me. Our noob, who now carries a 101 average after 15 weeks of bowling and plenty of practice sessions with his girlfriend, our anchor, rolled FORTY ONE UNDER. Unholy toasted satanic kittehs, he threw a friggin SIXTY. 6. 0. 60. Five year old children throw a 60. Usually more. We were doomed. But it’s couples bowling, so what are you going to do? “yay buddy, go buddy, you can do it, rah rah rah” as he hammers the gutter frame after frame. It’s not like the lane isn’t 4 feet wide. All you have to do is stay on the thing and you’ll get some pins. Nope. Lost it by 48. So that was Game 1.

Miss Anchor and I both got a hambone in Game 2 ( XXXX aka a 4-gasm or a 4-bagger ) and our soulmates didn’t do too poorly, so we took that one by about 11 I think.

Game 3 and our opponents weren’t even trying. They were half drunk, and slagging the balls all over. It didn’t matter. We were up by 87 in the 6th frame, enough to wake a slim glimmer of hope that we could not only win a second game, but also hold the margin and capture wood. Oh please. Who am I fooling? The moment we start trying to win, out comes the suck in all it’s multi-colored glory. And in the 7th frame we started getting managed. It’s the classic spot to “rally” in. Even if you’re just pretending to. Suddenly, instead of 1s and 3s and gutter balls, they’re hitting strikes. Really? Where’d this shit come from? And they ate up our lead, and ate our lunch, stole our milk money, and kicked our school books in the dirt. Waaah!! By which I mean we lost, and lost hard, so that we weren’t even close to getting wood. So we’re sinking to the bottom of the standings faster than ever.

I know, I know. Summer league. Fun league. Not so competitive. Having fun. Trying. Almost like Date Night, only without the anticipation of anything afterwards.  At least I’m pretty sure we’ll face a different team next week. And then Winter League starts, for which we have only half a team.

I’m giving serious thought to just joining a singles league. That’s not bowling for the relationship-free folks, that’s bowling as a Team Of One. I’m tired of the let downs. A 60. JJCOAPS. A friggin 60.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/20/2015 at 05:30 PM   
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   Thursday - August 13, 2015

Not a good night on the lanes

We went down 2-5 in our last week of round robin bowling. That probably won’t change our 3rd place position in the standings, but it looks to me like the team we played last night will be the team we face for the next 2 weeks in the finals.

The good news is that they can’t bring in any substitutes for those weeks, so the ringers they’ve been using will just have to stay home for once. So maybe we stand a chance.

We stood little chance last night. We got burned in the first game when their anchor threw a 277; 7 strikes in a row, 9/, 3 more strikes and then some pins. Nice game for a 185 average roller. I went 38 over for a 203 but that wasn’t enough, and we lost by 45. Everyone on their team bowled well above average, and everyone else on my team was Teh Suck.

We bowled even worse the second game. I lost my line and dropped to something pathetic like a 145. Our noob, after 15 weeks of learning to bowl, threw 2 0-0 frames. Double gutters. The first on his one and only mark, adding up to something like an 86. Our anchor was 60 under, and we lost that game by about 72.

But we rallied. Mostly. We were even or ahead almost all of the final game. At the end of the 8th frame we were 86 ahead, and felt that with a bit of luck we could close the gap and maybe take wood. I was marking every frame, but with spares and just a few strikes. And then we either faltered, or faltered while we were being managed. Because suddenly the other team started making strikes left and right. I caved to the pressure, or to the black aura miasma emanating from a couple of my teammates. C’mon, lighten up. We’re playing a game here, m’kay? Win or lose, if you can’t have fun, why the hell are you here? Whatever. I blew the 9th with an 8-miss, and I blew the 10th with a 9-miss. So I threw away a possible 220 game and finished with a 189. Sure, still above average, but not what it could’ve been. Noob dude finally stopped bowling from his ass and slanging his arm all over the place, and managed to roll the ball down the middle of the alley for a change, letting him finish with the Great Scott score of 111. ("Great Scott” from Rocky Horror, combined with the old style score sheets you wrote on with a grease pencil; folks would draw a caret “roof” over the 111 and thus it became 1 person in a skinny little building, ie an outhouse, and thus it’s still known as the shithouse score. It wins you a roll of toilet paper at the prize meeting after the season, and a bit of lightweight jeering. ) But WTH, I think we should give him MVP for that, because the “management” we were getting only managed to eat 79 pins of our 86 pin lead, and we actually won that game. By 7. So no wood for us either.

No subs allowed for the finals, so this team will have to say goodbye to it’s 225 average ringers who are running a 189 average in this league, and just get by with their own 85 average noob, who hasn’t even been around in 8 weeks. Hey, 75 is his absentee score.

I really wish I could afford to join a highly competitive league by myself. I’ve got the competition bug really bad. Shame is, I can’t bowl anywhere near good enough to stand up in that kind of league. Maybe someday. Mostly.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/13/2015 at 11:36 AM   
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   Thursday - August 06, 2015

a mark shy

Rats. We split it 3-4 last night, against a team that wasn’t even there. Ok, they had pre-bowled, so there were scores. But without their physical presence, we had the silly idea that we would get out of there faster. Oh, how wrong. We actually wound up staying late, getting some tips from the owner, but that’s another tale. Lead with the inside of your forearm was the gist of that; it keeps your hand straight and keeps your elbow in, leading to a nice straight swing and reducing the chances of over turning your hand on the release.

Right. I threw Ok in the first game, nothing great, and we lost that one by a few pins. Their score was down in the second game, and we threw poorly, but poorly good enough (sounds like a misnomer, right?), and we won by at least 40. Come the third game, and they had posted some good numbers, well over 120 over their team average. I said it’s time to buckle down, get focused, relax and bowl our best. Our anchor went 24 over. I finally figured out that the adjustment I needed was more speed, so I raised my push-away and got the ball zooming, and churned out a 35 over average game. So I did my part I feel. Dear little Life Partner was over too. Not sure how the noob guy did, but he was pretty floppy all night. Which is getting a bit annoying at this point. Improve already, geez. Anyway, come the final throw, total up the scores, and we’re 10 behind. Crivens. So they took 2 wins for 4, and we had 1 win and the wood for 3.  I don’t know how that will affect us in the standings, but we’re 13 out of first and it’s nearly the end of the season, so any dreams of victory are just dreams. Hey, summer league. Have fun, enjoy the air conditioning, have a beer. Good enough.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/06/2015 at 07:48 AM   
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   Thursday - July 30, 2015

rising towards the end

We rolled to a pretty easy victory over the 2nd place team last night, taking 5-2. We flubbed the 10th frame of the 2nd game and wound up losing it by 4. Rats. One more mark! But the important thing is the 5 points won, since they were only in 2nd place by 1 or 2. So, with just 2 or 3 weeks to go, does that put us in 1st or 2nd? I don’t know, but we’re very close. So who knows, this could work out for us nicely.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/30/2015 at 08:07 AM   
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   Thursday - July 23, 2015

Sore Hand

We split things 4-3 last night, winning the first and last games by a bit, but losing the second game by a lot, which allowed our opponents to take wood.

I bowled a tiny bit above average each game, but I was having a blast throwing my “new” ball. And today I’m paying the price for it. My IQ Pearl had been getting pretty lifeless, and the coverstock was getting pretty chewed up, so I had it sanded fresh and run through the Rejuvenator™ to get the lane oil out of it. And it came back to me with fresh finger inserts. Nice. And perhaps a bit too tight. I’ve got my fingertips in them all the way, down to the first joint the way you’re supposed to. And every time I throw the ball, there’s this tug on my hand and this audible little double pop. It’s popping my knuckles every throw, but it’s also revving up like mad and turning the corners sharply for once. So I enjoyed that, but by the middle of the 3rd game my hand was getting tired. And today those fingers are kinda sore. Next time I’ll try just putting the tips halfway in.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/23/2015 at 10:01 AM   
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   Thursday - July 16, 2015

a run of 6 and some more deep space adventure

We must have had some astral syzygy last night, bringing Pluto and all her moons into alignment* , because we won all 7 points last night.

Conditions were strange once again, and it was another of those nights when your team wins by not losing as much as the other team. We managed to roll just a bit under team average for Games 1 and 3, winning each by more than 30 pins. Game 2 we took by more than 100, which was largely my doing. Don’t ask me where it came from, but I found a good line through the mess and just laid down strike after strike. I opened with one strike, then followed it by another, and another, and another ... 6 in a row. Just when I started thinking maybe I could go all the way I miffed it a bit, throwing an 9 / in the 7th, which gave me a 1 under 149 in the 5th. Then I got back on that pony in the 8th and threw another X. Alas, an 8/ in the 9th killed the 170s game dream, but at least I marked. Double X in the 10th, and then I flubbed it for a 4 left me with a “measly” 253, which might be the high game for this tiny summer league so far. I know it’s good for another foam rubber beer can cover prize at the end of the season, and ordinarily it would be good for another one of those refrigerator magnet things from USBC. Except this isn’t a sanctioned league, and also because USBC has a bad case of rectal-cranial inversion and is trying to self-destruct**.

* [ still not a official planet, geologically active Pluto is nearly a solar system of it’s own, with 5 moons, ranging in size from the larger Charon down to the 27 mile long flying ice covered potato Hydra. If it isn’t a planet, then it’s the Shark Vacuum of the solar system, sucking up all the bigger cracker crumbs and chunks of astral debris way out there at the back end of forever. Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos are the names of the moons. So now I have to ask, where is the line between moon and asteroid, if 27x20 mile Hydra is a moon, but 975km Ceres is but an asteroid? And to confuse us all even more, there are several asteroids ... that have their own moons ( a dozen or so even have several )! ]

** We heard last summer that USBC had changed its annual membership to a seasonal one. It used to be that you’d sign up in the fall, and be sanctioned for the winter season and the following summer season. You’d pay your $16 dues, and they’d mail you a glossy little bowling magazine every month. And you’d get a pin, or a patch for your various annual achievements (eg 75 pins over game, 250 game, 700 series, Dutch 200, etc). Then dues went up to $20. And the magazine became digital at the official website. And the award categories were thinned out, and the awards themselves became vinyl key rings.  This sucked, but you could still amass your year’s collection on one of the handle straps of your bowling bag, like scalps on a red indian’s belt. Then they degraded the awards even more, making them crappy cardboard faced fridge magnets. This year they’ve gone over to a “lifetime” basis, which means “You threw a 275 game 6 years ago and we gave you a key ring. Suck it up, that’s all the prize you’re getting, you only get one per lifetime.” And now they’re collecting extra dues for folks who play in the summer leagues, even though there is no championship series for the winners of these leagues, as the winter season has. And they don’t even issue you a membership card. And winter mini-seasons aren’t part of the annual either, and each short season requires its own membership. Crivens! Bowlers everywhere are giving the USBC the one fingered salute, and for all I know the organization will collapse within a year or two. Somebody somewhere is sucking millions of dollars out of the kitty, and people are getting fed up. We want our annual gibs. Oh, USBC also stopped sponsoring the 300 rings ages ago. Even before the price of gold went through the roof, they were bleeding cash because so many people can throw perfect games these days. Whatever; the rings I don’t care about. The rest? Double the dues (20 annual + 10 summer + 10 winter mini-league) and give me nothing for it at all? Fuck them. Good and hard.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/16/2015 at 09:01 AM   
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   Thursday - July 09, 2015

adding insult to injury

So we split things 3-4 last night, winning just one game but winning it by lots, then by losing the next two games by just a little. So we got the wood.

Poor G, our noob. He’s got some terrible dental issues and is going to have to have several surgeries. He was there bowling last night, even all swollen up. What a trooper. But he was pretty exhausted. Too exhausted to remember to do any of the silly bits he’d been doing that were wrong. So he threw his two highest games so far, and his highest series. It figures, right?

One of the hardest parts of the game is letting the ball do the work. It’s so easy to think you have to force things to get them to happen. No. Let the ball do the work.

And it was a little bit humorous to see this “I give up, I just can’t do this” style of bowling work for someone else for a change. Usually it’s me.

I had a semi-poor night. Nothing fantastic, but I was over average in 2 out of 3 games. Yay. 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2015 at 09:16 AM   
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   Thursday - June 25, 2015

Feel frustrated

Another night of summer league, another 2-5 loss for us. I don’t get it.

I’m bowling well, turning in a 590 series this week and something similar last week. Which means I’m averaging in the upper 190s, which isn’t bad. It’s way over the 160s number they gave me, mostly because of that night the lane oiler flooded the place.  So I’m developing, slowly. Except I keep leaving a pin. Bane of my existence. Oh, I pick it up, mostly. A one pin leave is a gimmee. At least it ought to be. All those people who are “I hate the 10 pin so much!!” are just hurting themselves. I know at least 3 methods of making that spare, but really, confidence is almost all it takes.

I have unusual ideas. If I were the Driver’s Ed teacher, my students wouldn’t get near a car for the first 3 weeks. Or even near pavement. No, they’d be out in the back lot, learning to ride little 80cc - 125cc 4 stroke dirt bikes. Which look almost like clown toys when ridden by adult sized people. They’re dirt bikes for 10 -12 year olds. Right. But we’d start in the dirt, learning balance and learning awareness. And shifting, and how to brake properly, and how to maintain your machine. And when the whole class can ride together around the track a couple times without falling over or running each other down, then we switch to little street bikes. And we take that all the way to getting our license. And then we do cars.

Teaching bowling would be similar. Here’s your ball. Stand here. Down there, there aren’t 10 pins. There are only 2. The 10, and the 7. Your job is to knock them both down, one pin per throw. And all we’re going to do is learn to throw the corner pins, until it becomes second nature from any spot.  Along the way we’ll learn a few kinds of release, and how to use targets, and how to put the ball where you want it. And maybe even how to get the thing revved up. But all we’d do is the 10 and the 7, until they become reflexive. Then we do all the other pins as singles. Then we do the 6 classic double leaves. Then, and only then, do we bring out all 10 pins together and work on getting strikes. But we start with the “impossible” and turn them “normal”, and suddenly the crybabies are all 190 average bowlers.

I teach pistol shooting the same way. Ears on, eyes on, stand like this, arm out, hand high on the frame, blah blah blah. And I don’t tell them to be afraid of the recoil or the noise. But I do put a full power .357 Magnum in their hands. And they shoot it, no big deal. Because it isn’t. At least not for the first 30 shots or so. But they accept the sound and the recoil as being part of what shooting guns is, and even the most skittish are over it all by round #6.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/25/2015 at 07:07 AM   
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   Thursday - June 11, 2015

Trounced ‘Em

We were up against the 1st place team last night. I know their anchor from Greed League. With our noob team member, we wound up getting 45 pins handicap. Hot damn. And away we went.

They lost the first game by 165 pins. They didn’t come out hot, or even warm, and we opened with 5 strikes and 2 spares for our team of four in the first 2 frames. We kept that lead going and growing, as they never caught fire. Wipeout. I threw a 198 so I put a couple dozen points in for our side.

They lost the second games by 114 pins. Their anchor E was having thumb problems. Actually, he was stressing out, and squeezing the daylights out of his ball. And no matter how hard you squeeze, at the end of your swing that 16lb really, really wants to come off of your hand. So he tore his thumb up a bit. Too tight a thumb hole and too much pressure. And they’re one of those teams where the anchor is the savior and MVP every game. So when he’s down, they’re pretty much out. I threw a 209, another nicely over average game.

We won the third game by 6 pins. We were tiring out, and probably socializing a bit too much, while anchor E switched to a lighter ball with a bigger thumb. So he rallied, and they rallied a little with him. But we held on, and my turkey in the mid-game gave us a little margin. They finished well in the 10th, but we di too, and stayed just a few pins up. Good enough.

Early in the third game the lanes really broke down and everyone but me started throwing really ugly splits, and the 1 pin leave gremlins were out in force. I used the situation as a teaching moment for our new guy G. See how X on their side has thrown 9-0 for the last 3 frames? [swish, klunk] 4 frames? Two lessons: first, you need to get accurate enough so that any one pin leave is a total gimmee. Every time. Learn to see the line from anywhere to that pin, and then throw it. A one pin leave should be an automatic spare. Second, you know what the definition of insanity is right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Right. So if you throw a 9, and everything in your throw felt right and looked right, then have confidence in your throw and make an adjustment for the next frame. Half a shoe forward if it’s the 10, half a shoe back if it’s the 7, or if it’s a middle pin, move your target a board depending on how you ball is hitting the pocket. Two 9 is excusable if you weren’t sure if your first frame’s throw was good, but a third 9 with the same leave means you’re being stubborn: make the adjustment. And really, really learn to pick up a single pin leave from anywhere, with either your straight throw or your hook throw.

So this defeat will knock the first place team down as much as 4 places, and we could bubble right up to first from fifth. I doubt that will happen, but I’m pretty sure we’ll both move at least 2 slots in the standings. Summer league. We’re going to win this one this year.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/11/2015 at 09:32 AM   
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   Thursday - June 04, 2015

Gotta Train Him

Summer mini-league bowling! We almost managed a sweep last night, taking the first and third games by a handy margin, but we lost the 2nd game by just 4 pins. Oh well, 5-2 beats a shutout any day. New bowler G is showing some bad habits. Somebody really needs to show him how to make a less bouncy approach and how to get his arm swing going properly. And to keep his eyes down. And to throw to his target. Beginners have so much to learn, but a good swing is the very first thing.

I tried showing him the basic Luggage Throw last night, but I don’t think I really had his attention. Still, it was fun for me to go back to that old release, and use it to throw a 192 game just dinking around. It’s a very forgiving release that puts a decent amount of spin on the ball, but - as always - it’s all in the follow through. Straight wrist, hand in the ball at 3 o’clock. Pushaway, swing, squat, lunge, project the ball, thumb out, DON’T FLOP YOUR HAND, lift and follow through with your arm coming up to “answer the phone”. The ball spin is imparted with the sides of your fingers if you keep your wrist stiff laterally, giving you a fairly forward tilt axis, which gives a gentler more arcing hook. If you let your wrist sag down laterally, as it would if you were swinging up a suitcase to put it on the counter, then the tilt axis is more vertical, and the ball will react more sharply down the end of the lane. So even this basic toss is adaptable, which is why it’s good to have in your arsenal. Plus you can do it when your arm is tired, and even if you choke the follow through a bit the ball still hooks.

I want to have the fun experience of having the huge advantage of a low average beginner on my team who gets better every week. Sure, he’s got an 86 average now, but with a bit of work we can get him to the 160s by the end of the summer season, and still get the handicap advantage.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/04/2015 at 09:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging • Eye-Candy •  
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