Chapter 11. General Bowling Tips

This chapter summarizes the most important steps to better bowling.

Some of them have been mentioned in other chapters but they are repeated here because I believe that they cannot be emphasized too much.

Bowling is a sport-so be a sport.

Try to keep uppermost in your mind that bowling is* a game, not a life-and-death matter. And because it is a game, you should play it as such. Take your "tough breaks" with a smile and your defeats like a gentleman. You will find that you are more popular with your fellow bowlers, and in addition you will bowl better. Displays of temper-kicking racks, balls, or posts, and similar behavior-stamp the offender as a poor sport, while adding nothing to his stature as a bowler. Let the score sheet do your talking for you.

Always stay behind the foul line.

This goes for practice just as much as for league or tournament play. Bowlers who pay little or no attention to the line in practice or in sociable games often suffer a rude and embarrassing awakening when they participate in a league or tournament and suddenly discover that they have fouled. Frequently, fouling spoils an individual's entire evening, not only for score but also for his enjoyment of the proceedings. Be sure to allow enough distance for the number of steps, beginning with short steps. Do this faithfully in practice and you will not risk the bugaboo of fouling when the chips are down.

Concentrate on every shot, not merely on your first or "strike" ball.

One should probably concentrate even more on the spare ball, for, as some have said, "Anybody can make a strike, but it takes a good man to make a spare." While that is not strictly true, playing spares correctly is one of the basic components of a sound bowling game. Do not lose your temper if your first ball produces a tap or a railroad, but buckle down and shoot your second ball with careful determination. On an "impossible" split or railroad, aim for one pin. You will be surprised how often one or two pins prove to be the winning margin in close games.

Roll the ball-don't throw it.

There is a good, sound reason for this. If one throws a ball, it slides an indeterminate distance and "takes" at various places and in varying degrees. Obviously, there can be no consistency in such a delivery. On the other hand, a rolled ball is delivered smoothly and one can repeat this performance time after time without effort.

As a result, the action of the ball "takes" at practically the same spot each time.

To clinch the case, I would like to point out that a rolling ball is far more effective in toppling the pins, for it has a "mixing" action which the skidding ball cannot achieve.

Your natural speed is your best speed.

The speed at which you can best control the ball and have it working effectively is the best speed for you. When you have determined your natural speed, you will find that you can bowl for long periods of time without tiring. If you "force" your ball, you cannot control it, and you will tire more quickly. Work on your speed so that you can find out which speed is natural to you.

When you practice, practice intelligently.

Concentrate on elimination of the faults you committed at your last session, and try to improve in those departments. Perhaps you have been hopping or lunging at the line. If so, concentrate on a smooth finish. Check your footwork and timing Whatever you do, go about it deliberately-not in a haphazard, hit-or-miss manner. Do the same thing time after time until you feel that you have overcome the fault. Practice may not be fun, but serious practice will pay off in future pleasure through consistently higher scores.

Learn to relax while bowling.

You cannot do your best when you are tense and overeager, because your approach becomes zigzaggy and your motions jerky.

A smooth, easy delivery-the kind you can use time after time without effort-brings the best results.

Try to hit every spare "dead center."

Do not be satisfied with merely converting the spare in any fashion at all. Concentrate on the exact spot you wish to hit. It stands to reason that if you are hitting the key pin on the wrong side and still managing to convert the spare through a lucky bounce off the kickback or in some other fashion, you are courting disaster. Bowling is a game in which the law of averages inevitably takes its. toll. You cannot keep on being lucky forever. So shoot to make your spares correctly. "Cover" your pins.

PICTURE

Finishing properly is just as important as starting properly.

Getting started on the correct foot, using a smooth pushaway to get the ball in motion, timing the movement of your hands and body, and other such procedures do little good if you suddenly decide at the last second to "overpower the pins." You might succeed in getting a strike on that particular throw (you will note I didn't say "roll"), but in so doing you are asking for trouble in succeeding frames, for you have thrown your timing off and may find it difficult to regain it. Remember to check yourself occasionally on the various phases of finishing properly to make sure that you are not falling into bad habits.

Use the best angle to get strikes and spares.

Because of the angle at which the ball strikes the pins, it would not do for the average bowler rolling a hook or curve to start his delivery from the extreme left side of the approach. On the other hand, a bowler using a backup delivery (one that fades to the right), should not begin from the middle. In shooting at spares, remember to "give the ball all the alley space possible." For the 7-pin, you should begin your roll from the right-hand side. For the 10-pin, start from the left-hand side, and so on. The 6-10 spare, for instance, should be played from the left-hand side so that the ball not only takes advantage of the width of the lane but also comes into the pins at a better angle to topple the 10-pin after hitting the 6-pin.

Always bear in mind that your percentage of scoring is increased when you play from the proper angle.

Control and consistency give bowling improvement.

Even the poorest bowlers sometimes roll a 200 game, but the better bowlers, and in particular the experts, do it often. The star bowler depends upon his control and consistency to keep his average high. But he wasn't born with either. He had to develop both over a long period of time and through plenty of practice. Actually, consistency means the ability to use your control time after time. So keep after your game and be willing to practice. It will pay dividends in higher scores.

Overturning a ball is easier than turning it properly.

If you observe the topnotchers closely, you will see that they try to put just as much "stuff" on the ball as possible without losing control. It is unfortunately true that all too many low-average bowlers simply try to put a lot of "stuff" on the ball without regard for control of the tricky delivery. The fallacy of this lies in their trying to impress their friends or in seeking to take a "short cut" to high scoring by trying to master this difficult delivery before they have even come close to mastering the simple fundamentals of approach and delivery.

Perfection in fundamentals means higher scores.

The success of one very famous collegiate football team may be traced, in part, to the idea of its coaches that a team well versed in fundamentals can beat the biggest or trickiest of foes. Consequently, when this school's first football practice is called each season, every man, regardless of his ability in high school or in previous college years, is given a thorough and painstaking grounding in such fundamentals as blocking and tackling. Bowling is exactly the same. The more perfect your grasp of fundamentals, the more consistently high scores you will roll, for you are then repeating, time after time after time, the same exact steps, the same swing of the ball in rhythm with the hands, body and feet, the same backswing and the same release. You will be as close to a machine as it is possible to get.

A one-pin spare is roughly a 23-inch target.

This statement may come as a surprise to many low-average bowlers who seem to let a one-pin spare setup "buffalo" them. Let me explain what I mean.

To begin with, that pin standing out there on the lane has a diameter, at its greatest width, of approximately 5 inches. The ball with which you intend to hit the pin has a diameter of approximately 9 inches, which, in effect, gives you about 14 inches of space in which to hit the pin on the left. But, to make it even better, you might also hit it on the right, which gives you nearly 9 inches more, or a total of approximately 23 inches of room in which to succeed in toppling the pin.

Even in the case of the 7-pin or the 10-pin, this holds fairly true. For instance, in shooting for the 10-pin, you still possess your original 9 inches of the ball on the left side, plus the 5 inches of the pin itself, plus a large part of the 9 inches on the right, for, on many occasions, a ball just dropping into the gutter will graze the 10-pin enough to topple it. The same, in reverse, is true of the 7-pin, granted in both cases that you are playing these spares from the correct angle.

Only practice can develop perfect form

Work on just one or two details at a time.

Do not try to concentrate on everything at once. While you are practicing, try working first on your footwork and your release. Or perhaps your pushaway and your backswing, or even just one of them. Don't try to think of every individual phase of your game or you will wind up improving none of them. Smooth out your game one detail at a time.

Never make the same mistake three times in a row.

Anyone who fails three successive times in the same exact fashion is not learning a thing. For example, if I throw what I consider is my normal ball on a certain alley and it fails to come up to the 1-3 pocket, hitting the 3-pin practically dead center, I begin to suspect that the alley is "fast." On my second time on this same lane, I might again throw my normal ball and see it hit the same spot. On the third shot, you can be sure, I will direct my ball so far to the left that I may hit the 1-2 pocket, or the headpin dead center, but I will definitely avoid making the same mistake three successive times.

Anyone who has bowled any time at all knows that every bowling lane is different from every other one, and that two adjoining lanes may have an entirely different effect on the path of your ball. It is up to you to learn this, and learn it as fast as you can. The top-ranking champions very often are champions because they were able to solve these tricky conditions faster than their opponents. But, first and foremost, they learned from their mistakes, and turned what might have been a disadvantage into an advantage.

Watch the action of your ball closely and profit by your observation.

Hold the ball easily-don't squeeze it.

Hold a ball as you would a suitcase weighing sixteen pounds. Simply get a firm, natural, grip on it. Do not seize it in a death grip, nor hold it so loosely that you might drop it. Use a relaxed, secure grip.

Good bowlers are made-not born.

Every good bowler in the game today has been developed. He has served his apprenticeship through long practice and great concentration on fundamentals. He began in mediocrity, since no bowler ever possessed championship ability to begin with. The wonderful thing about the game, however, is that it requires no special ability, except perhaps co-ordination, to become a champion.

Even co-ordination can be developed. So shoot high, but don't ever be misled into thinking that you can reach the top without lots of practice. It can't be done.