Graaille

I (and others) have noticed that bowlers during the 10 minutes of practice in league can throw strikes at will until they turn the scoring on. If you will notice, for most bowlers it is easy to throw strikes during the 10 minutes of practice, but all of the sudden it is much harder to get the ball to the pocket once scoring starts.

I submit to you that the lanes have not change significantly to cause the problem but the bowler has. When we are bowling during the 10 minutes of practice we can strike at will because we are not really "trying".

That means that even though we are stiff (not warmed up yet) our bodies are nonchalant and we are not aiming or trying to put any "stuff" on the ball.

But as soon as scoring starts, then we start "trying" to throw good shots. Our bodies are tenser; we usually throw the ball harder and with more revs. We often miss our target line because we are now "aiming" for it. Where before in practice we were just letting the ball flow because we didn?t care that much where it went, but it produced strikes.

The extra ball speed can throw the ball through the breakpoint and the additional revs can make the ball "over reactive". So where we had lots of area during practice now we seem to have none. But it is the bowler and the way the ball is thrown that has changed so drasticly, not the lane condition.

I will agree that if the league is on sport patterns or PBA conditions that carry down can become a factor very quickly because of the increase in oil volume outside the 10 board. The flatter sport patterns can cause an even worse disaster once the bowler starts "trying" because even small mistakes show up in a big way, where on a typical league wall small mistakes are just absorbed by the pattern.