Bowling Guy

A few days ago I went and did some bowling. During this session I tried out some techniques that were mentioned on http://www.bowlingboards.com/forum.php. The first is two finger bowling. The second is tucking the pinky finger. I had never thought much about any of these things at all till I went to the above site and read a little about. After asking some questions about it, I still didn't understand it fully and felt the only way for a left handed bowler to under stand these things. It would require me to actually do them.

Lets start with two finger bowling. This style is usually when the bowler uses the middle and ring finger in the holes but leaves the thumb out of the third hole. This style is not really that common and there is a good reason, in my opinion why that is. The styles that are common all teach about getting the ball out in front of you and at the right moment release the ball. This allows the ball to be thrown out in front of your foot and on the other side of the foul line. If you don't have the right set up and you try the two finger style, I have found that you don't have the same control over when the ball leaves your hand. I believe that this has to do with the fact that when you use your thumb you are able to get a good hold on the ball. You can be more relaxed in your grip and let the ball roll off of your fingers. With two fingers, I would think that the avid two finger bowler, would have smaller finger holes so that they could bend their fingers to get a good grip of the ball. I, however, was not able to do this. Even though the first one I through like this was a strike, the second one dropped and went into the gutter, and the third one only knocked down 6 pins. I tried it two more times but just didn't feel comfortable bowling with only two fingers. If you can figure out what I was doing wrong with this style and you are able to use it, by all means go for it. It is something that is different and not seen a lot. If you can be consistent with it and score high, you might wow some people who believe the only way to bowl is with all three fingers. Prove them wrong and go for it.

The second thing I tried was bending your pinky or tucking it. This is suppose to be a technique that you can use to get a higher rev rate. I usually bowl with my hand completely turned to the left side. This gives me the most curve with the current ball I am using. So I tucked my pinky under. The first thing I noticed was how un-natural this felt and also that it hurt my pinky a little. I just tried to put my fingers into the position that it would be if I was holding the ball and I noticed that my ring finger will not straighten out like my middle finger. By bending my pinky under my ring finger ends up with a curve to it that I know will not really fit in my ball. This alone could be where the pain was coming from. My fingers just won't go that way. Anyway, I threw the ball three times and it just hurt. At the time I thought it was due to having my hand to the side. So on the fourth attempt I put my hand under the ball but felt the same thing. I threw it anyway but did not notice a difference. So I have determined that this is a technique that I will not be using again.

Part of bowling is trying new techniques, styles, balls, hand supports in an attempt to score a higher game. We, as bowlers, never want to be stuck bowling the same score every time. What's the point of that? If you can get a higher score by changing to a different ball, style, etc then do it. Don't be stuck with the same scores. Always strive for that higher game.

As to what I did that day. I bowled pretty well even with trying new things and taking some risks while going for spares. One of the risks I took was attempting to throw the ball straighter on spares. This gave me some success but not that much. I picked up spares 61% of the time over nine games. So I was better than 50% but not by much. I also found out that over nine games I don't pick up spares as much as I use to back in my youth bowling days. I threw a strike 36 times out of 98 attempts. So I got a strike 37% of the time throughout the nine games I bowled. This is something that I can say that was contributed to me getting tired during games 8 and 9 but also to trying the above mentioned things. I had 8 splits and converted none of them. I had two interesting splits. The first was 3,6,7 split and I only was able to get the 6 pin due to the ball not curving as much as I was hoping for. I had one of those shots were it takes out the pin next to one but doesn't go to the side to get that other pin. Instead it went straight past it. I was able to pick up the 7 pin 67% of the time and the 10 pin 75% of the time. I believe that as I get back into it more, my percentages will go up.

In the 5th game I had an all time high of 255. I threw 9 strikes and two spares. I had a spare in the 4th frame and also in the 10th frame. So my score looked like this:

X X X 9/ X X X X X 6/X

I can't believe how many strikes I throw that game. I was on fire in that game and it was also a game where I was not trying anything that I wasn't use to doing. This game felt great. Well, that's all for today. I have league tomorrow night and will be posting about that on Tuesday. Until then, may the strikes be with you.