Mounts Bowling

I decided to spend some time this morning to talk a little about the summer bowling season so far. Monday evening saw week five of the 2009 Open Doubles league and the first week bowling on the US Open pattern. The first four weeks were on Shark, which is not generally as hard as the US Open but for me it has historically been one of my lowest scoring patterns. I felt pretty good about laying down a 191 average over 24 games on it and I was looking forward to one of the toughest patterns out there, the 25 foot, flat patterned US Open Pattern. I haven’t bowled on this more than a couple times at least but most notably I traveled to North Brunswick, NJ and bowled in the US Open on this pattern back in early 2006. Let’s just say I had my challenges to deal with at that time. I was short on equipment and a little under experienced. I ended up scoring miserably.

At the very least Monday was different. I didn’t score lights out but I managed to hold average and shoot about a 191 average on the day. Through week four my average was pretty much right in line with the league average on Shark but after watching the scores drop precipitously on Monday I’m sure the league’s overall average dropped significantly on this new pattern (in fact it did drop to 186). I look forward to seeing how I stack up. When all was said and done I bowled a 188, 233, 165, 157, 204, 192 and I led my doubles team to a fantastic week going 14-1. This was well needed as we were slowly sliding in the standings through the first four weeks. Now, after week 5 we are squarely in the middle of the pack at 38-37, one point over .500.

To start the day off on fresh oil I threw my original Brunswick Fury. I didn’t expect to through this but found the oil volume to be lower than expected. The Fury was a perfect fit for the first couple games. I slid at about 25, laying down at about 22, aiming for about 10 at 45’ with moderately fast speed. This ended up working well for the first couple games as I shot +21 for the front two. After the jump from lanes 39-40 down to 23-24 I found the back end to be much weaker when the Fury wouldn’t recover from the breakpoint so I switched balls to my Twisted Fury and moved in a little sliding at about 26, laying down at 23 and aiming for a breakpoint at about 10. I also slowed my shot down to a moderately slow speed but just couldn’t find the break I was looking for; the ball kept coming in light no matter what minor adjustments I made. Eventually I tried my Fury Pearl for its earlier roll and strong backed and found it too aggressive. Eventually by the end of game 4 the Twisted finally started working but it was too late and my scores were terrible. I even missed a spare to close out game 4 with a 157. The second set we managed to win on the strength of my substitute partner, John Powanda, and the failure of our opponents to bowl any better. I shot -78 for the set.

Games 5-6 were completely different as e moved down to 17-18. The lanes were more broken down and the back ends were flying. I ended up stepping left throwing my Fury Pearl, sliding at 31, laying down at 27 and aiming for a break point at about 11 at 45’. The shot held up well and though I tugged a few I had some room and managed a couple good scores as I slowly adjusted my feet left as the frames went by. By the end of game 6 I had moved my slide to about 37, laying down at 33 with a break point at 11. For me the shot gets tougher as I move my feet left but I managed pretty good overcoming a couple missed spares in game 6. In the end it came down to the tenth frame and I buried three in a row as anchor to close out the win by one point. Everybody was thoroughly entertained by the last frame of the game as a number of folks came down to watch. We swept a typical first place contending team in dramatic fashion. It was fun and it made me feel better to be able to adjust and overcome a bad second set with a good third as I shot -4 for the two games.

Over all going 14-1 was about as good as you can do and it really clawed our team back into contention bringing us back to a positive winning record. I’ve been bad at recording my thoughts on each week and I think a lot of that has to do with our team not doing so great thus far so I will try to commit to doing a better job in the future recapping each week despite the results. After all, the poor results can tell me a lot about what I was doing and why it didn’t work. Next week, we’ll see if the shot holds up like it did this week and maybe I can improve on this week by learning to adjust to the games where the lanes play close to the way they did in the second set on Monday. The US Open pattern is a tough pattern and I would be very proud to come out of it shooting 24 games on it for a 190+ average; we’ll see how I can hold up.