A Scattered Brain

After a long day of calls, I had to take a late lunch and decided to get some practice in after Wednesday night’s poor performance.  The scores were as follows: 192, 182, 236, 259, 249.  The first two games were warming up and trying to put into practice one very valuable piece of information someone gave me on Wednesday… more on that later.

The last three games, I had a total of 1 open frame and if those would have counted, would have given me a 744 series (my first in a three game set of any kind).  So, what was this piece of very valuable information that helped today and hopefully can in the future?  I was told to “throw my second ball first”.  Apparently, to no real knowledge of mine until pointed out, I was trying too hard on my first ball, but had a nice relaxed swing and release on any spare ball.  So, today, instead of trying to guide or muscle my first throw, I just picked my target and went.  I didn’t try to add extra speed or revolutions.  The result; more consistent throws that hit harder.

Now, I know this was one practice session on one particular day and previous results don’t predict future outcomes; but if I can try to remember what I did (or really didn’t do) today, hopefully that can translate to better scores when it does count.

Have a great weekend!

So, this isn’t a great start to the revival of the bowling blog.  Last night we lost all 7 points (3 games and total pins) to our opponents, who were great fun to bowl with so that’s a consoloation.  The nearly one month layoff really didn’t help my scores:

Ouch, a 2 pin drop in average for one week.  Not good.  I was using a new ball, but that wasn’t the issue entirely.  I kept trying to hard.  I have a tendency to try to guide the ball which ends up taking away any power and drive.  When I start to do that and notice, I tend to over correct and throw the ball hard.  Usually I can make smaller adjustments and work out ok, but last night kept going from one extreme to another.

My spares really did me in.  Other than the times I had splits, I missed 2 easy spares in the first game, 4 in the second, and 1 in the 3rd.  That’s a total of 7 missed easy spares in 20 opportunities.  If I made those, that adds approximately 70 pins to my series and gets me to my average.  I know what I need to really practice on: smooth arm swing letting the ball do the work and spares.

I hope you all have a good rest of the week and weekend!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been pretty quiet about bowling lately and that has been for one primary reason… the last two months have really been bad. Ever since my great night (and best ever) on January 16th, I’ve not had one night over my average. Until last night… and it all just seemed to click again.

I bowled a 603 series and had two games over 200. My release was smooth and consistent and for the most part, my targeting was good too. Even in the middle 162 game, most of my strike shots were decent with a couple of bad breaks with splits.

Here are my scores for the season; you’ll be able to see what I mean about my slump.

I’ve also gotten my average back up over 180… dropping below that was a real shot against my ego for this season. There are only 8 weeks left that count toward average so achieving my goal of 190 for the season is well out of reach. If I can get two more series in the 600’s and none in the 400’s over that time I’ll be pretty happy.

So, we’ve just nearly passed the mid point of the season and so far, not too bad. I’ve had a few bad weeks, but for the most part it was pretty nice. I’ve been able to maintain a 180+ average, about 10 pins higher than last season so that’s a positive.

My biggest issue and average killer is my recent decline in spare shooting. Outside of this past week, I’ve been missing about half of my single pin spares. Sometimes I would shrug it off, but then I realized that shooting a single pin spare (no matter the pin) is like shooting free throws in basketball. I have a high standard when I see pro and college players shooting less than 90% free throws and now will hold myself to the same standard. If I can’t make 90% of my single pin spares, obviously I should work on that first and foremost. I can’t expect to strike more than 50% of the time so spare shooting is extremely important. Missing a single pin can account for 11 pins in scoring (the spare + next frame) so it is worth much more than just the single miss. This will be the thing I work on most over the rest of the season.

So, here are my scores for the first 17 weeks. Enjoy.

Did you see that last week!!!! I had some lucky breaks in the first two games and some equally unlucky breaks in the third game. Regardless, 641 is my personal best 3 game series so I’m pleased with that. I’ll be even happier if I get another 600 series next week…

Please note, I’m not sure why the table gets a little messed up when it posts, while editing everything looks good. It doesn’t seem to matter how I input the table, so oh well. I’m thinking about moving my blog elsewhere, and this may be the catalyst to do so.

Take care all and have a great week.

This bowling year is off to a strange start.  The first week was horrible and the last two weeks have started bad and ended GREAT!  Here is the chart:

Here’s the best and worst part.  I know exactly what I’m changing during that third game; my tempo.  For some reason though, it’s taking that long to adjust to find what’s right for me.  If I can get that reaction time down to a reasonable level I think I can start to average 190+ on a regular basis.

So, the summer season is over.  I ended up with a 185 average which isn’t too bad, but the season was a steady decline from the first week on down.  I’ll try to make the trend the other way for the long winter season.  I plan to incorporate something into my game that I’m always lacking; focus.  I will be more deliberate with my approach and try to throw every ball with a purpose instead of sometimes showing focus and other times just going up and bowling quickly.  Even if I am having a bad game/night, I need to work on maintaining a solid focus so that is my first goal for this season.

As far as average, I’m going to shoot for a goal of 190 for the season.  This will be quite difficult I know over 30+ weeks.  Goals are meant to be hard though, right?

I will try to be more consistent with updating my scores for those that have missed it.  We’ll see how that goes.

Greetings All once again,

So, the new season has started and along with bowling, I am also the League Secretary/Treasurer.  It’s the first time for me to take on that role, and aside from the extra cash I’ll receive at the end of the season, it’s something that really keeps me busy throughout the night.  I thought it would be just a simple as collecting the money and validating scores, but there is actually quite a bit more; so I guess it seems I’ll be really earning the money.

From a bowling stand point, at least so far, the added responsibilities have helped my game.  I’m focusing so much time and energy on my duties that when it’s time for me to go up to bowl I just quickly clear my head and go for it.  I do a lot less thinking in between frames not allowing me to over-analyze my previous frame(s).

Here is the table for the league so far:

If I’m lucky, I hope to be able to maintain above a 190 average for the summer.  I believe that 200 at this time, while it would be wonderful is a bit unrealistic.  190 may be as well, but with the good start, I wouldn’t feel right to keep my original goal of 180.

I hope all is well with all of you!

Greetings to all of my bowling fans. The long winter season is finally over. We have two weeks off before the summer session starts; so now is the best time to post my last set of stats. So, without further ado, here are the details of the entire season:

Overall, I am much more pleased with the second half than I was with the first half.  My spare shooting improved tremendously.  I had a lot more clean games (especially in the last 5 weeks with 4 of them).

One striking statistic is the average per game number.  In the first half, they were all fairly even; now there is a clear improvement from the first game to the third.  Perhaps, I should come and bowl an extra game of warmup on league nights?  Something to consider for the summer.

Well, I’ll let you go for now.  With the new software I’m writing to track my scores, it may be a while before I write the ability to export to a web format, but it will be something I’m working on.

Have a great day and take care!

Greetings all,

I hope you all had a terrific holiday season.  Bowling is back in full swing (it’s been going the last couple of weeks as well, but nothing really exciting to write about) and we got a 4th member for our team and I think that will work out very well.

So, why was it the best night ever?  Well, I had a couple of personal bests.  First, all of my games were over my average so that’s always a good thing.  Second, I had my highest series ever: 633 (for a 211 average for the night).  Now, that by itself is enough to make me happy and fairly proud, but there is more.

My last game was absolutely incredible.  I opened up with the first 9 frames as strikes and had a perfect game going into the 10th.  Well, rather it was nervers, freak release, combination of it all, I didn’t finish the 300 game.  I ended up with a 4 spare 8 in the tenth to finish with a 272.  Even in practice, where I normally average about 10 pins higher than league, I’ve never broken 270 before.  The game got really exciting after I got the first six strikes in a row, also a first for me.  I feel good that even after the nerves started kicking in that I continued to strike for a few more frames.

These are the types of nights that make bowling really fun and keep you coming back.  Now to find a way to do that kind of thing more consistently.

Have a great day!

Greetings to one and all (mostly I’m pretty sure it’s just my wife and the J that read this, and for that I truly thank you)

It isn’t exactly quite mid-season, but given that the rest of my team will miss the next two weeks I’m thinking we will just forfeit.  Of course, I’ll still probably go and bowl, but most likely not as part of my team at those times.  Given that, I’ll go ahead and reflect on my performance to this date.

Here are all of my scores up until now:

We’ll start with the bad news and move on to the good news.  First thing that sticks out is the fact that my best week (and only 200 game of the season) was the first week.  I have no real explanation for this.  The other truly bad statistic is in 45 games so far, I’ve not had one clean game at all.  I don’t get that many in practice (I’ve only had 2 in about 90 games over the same time period) but that indicates a lot of missed easy spares.  My average would easily jump 10-20 pins a game if I could just stop missing so many single pin spares, which are really inexcusable to miss with such a relatively large margin of error.

Now to take some positive things from these stats.  First, I’m within a 4 pin range for each of my games each week.  That means that I don’t consistently have a bad game based only on where it comes out of the three.  So week to week, I may have a bad game 1, but overall it seems to even out.  Also, my average has stayed consistent since it came down from that really inflated first few weeks.  It may mean I haven’t improved much, but it also means I haven’t declined either.

I have been working on many tweaks in my game from my stance, to approach, to release and I’m hoping that from the lesson I’ve taken so far to some more planned lessons in the future that these changes will pay off in the long term.

Most importantly, I still enjoy going every week and as long as I’m having fun, I will continue.  Of course, you always have more fun if you can see yourself improving, but I’m sure that will come in time.

I hope that all of you have a truly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Be safe over the holidays and hopefully you’re able to take some time off to enjoy the season!