LNIR - 2013-03-19: 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9

195+259+206 = 660
Balls in Bag: Burner #1, Blackbird

As you may have guessed by the title of the post, I had a bit of a carry problem in this series.  Well, that's not entirely accurate.  I had bad carry in 2 of the three games, and good carry in the middle game.  It's inexplicable.  I didn't really move a whole lot, didn't make any major adjustments, and was in the pocket all night.  I threw 3 shots that I knew off my hand were bad, and the rest I pured.  What makes no sense is where the pins fell.

I left 5 single pins the first game, and 7 in the third game.  But, I left 1 in the second game.  All throwing the same line, same speed, making very minor adjustments where needed.  Going through the first game, I knew I was all over the pocket, and set a goal to keep throwing the same line, thinking that the carry would come. And in the second game, it came.  259 with 11/12 flush in the pocket. (As a note, our team shot 987 this game, so yeah, we we all pretty dialed in).

I figured I was crusing to 700, despite the iffy 195 start, I felt like I couldn't miss.  And in the third game, I didn't miss.  I was 11/11 in the pocket, for a total of 4 strikes.  Can't explain what happened.  If there was any sort of consistency to my leaves, I'd be able to make an adjustment off of them and try to battle the carry, but there wasn't a pattern in sight.

On the bright side, it was the best I've felt in a very long time, and probably my highest pocket percentage of the season.  On the brighter side, I converted all 13 of the single pin spares I left.  Even an 80% conversion rate tonight would have probably dropped me below average.  But, I persisted, and I made my spares.  A good lesson for the upcoming tournaments.

LNIR - 2013-03-14 - New Toys

226+216+219 = 661
Balls in Bag:  Burner #1, Burner #2, Blackbird

Here's where the "Balls In Bag" line starts to get confusing.  Tonight was the debut of my 2 newest pieces, the Burner by Jet Bowling, the company I'm on the crew with, and the company I've been using exclusively since November.  I'll be writing a post more about why I switched from Storm, and what that's meant for my game, that should be coming in the very near future, but that's not the point of this post.

The Burners are drilled up to be my main balls for Nationals at the end of May, but obviously I need to get a few games on them first!  I haven't had much success when I save a ball for nationals, I feel like I need a few weeks/months to get acclimated to the feel of a piece, especially something as wildly different as my Burners.    The Burner #1 is the ball I used all night tonight, and that's kept at the 1500+Polish finish.  It's laid out very mildly, at 2.25x6.5x1.5, which should be perfect for Nationals, and how I've been throwing the ball this season.

So, the first three games with the ball went very well.  The lanes got a tad squirrly in the third game, but aside from that, if I could keep my speed down, I was in the pocket.  The few shots I got fast tended to blow through the breakpoint and leave me a nice little bucket varietal.  Continued to shoot spares pretty well, though I did miss 2 makeables that cost me a shot at 700, but, hey, what can you do.  Overall very pleased with the bowling, with the carry, and with the new piece.

LNIR: 2013-03-12 - Tried and True

192+234+245 = 671
Balls in Bag:  Surrender, Blackbird

Another night with the Surrender, another great night of bowling.  For whatever reason, I just match up great with this ball (and it might be the layout, the 5x4x3 is still my all time favorite house ball layout, though that may be changing).  No matter what line I end up having to play, I can get the ball to react great.  This night was no exception.  I got off to a bit of a rocky start, getting the first shot on 11 way too fast, and the second shot on 11 closer, but still too fast, but after the third frame, I didn't throw another bad shot until the 10th frame of game 2.

Carry was not as big of a problem as it had been in the most recent weeks either, with only a few single pin spares scattered here and there.  After that third frame, I got one shot fast in game 2, and 1 shot slow in game 3, but aside from that, I was locked in pretty much all night.  Starting to turn things around, and feeling really good about my ability to repeat shots at this point.

LNIR: 2013-03-10 - Best of a Mess

187+237+190 = 614
Balls in Bag: Jet, Surrender, Blackbird

I'm not a fan of pre-bowling.  Let's get that out of the way to start.  I'm even less of a fan of pre-bowling outside of normal(ish) league hours. This particular set was bowled on a Sunday afternoon.  So, after the 6:00 mixed league on Saturday night, and the 4-6 hours of "thunder alley" bowled on the lanes, you can imagine what kind of shape the lanes were in.  It was a mess.  Lane 24 seemed to have about 50 feet of oil, then a sharp breakpoint, and lane 23 was gorgeous, just hold for days, evidence of a lot of players staying right in the middle of the lanes.

So, as you can expect the lanes were the biggest challenge (not to mention the unruly bunch of kids next to us, that made concentration more difficult than it had to be.  The first game, I could easily have left the 3-10 split on every single shot on 24.  no move I made prevented the sudden snap at the back end.  Meanwhile, I was close to perfect on 23, because I didn't really have to think about anything.  I stayed mostly perfect on 23, and found a high-hard-one to work pretty well on 24, leading to a nice set the 2nd game.  The third game was looking fine, until an absolutely bizarre reaction in the tenth (when was the last time you saw a 2-5-7 split), which tempered an okay series.

Given the conditions and the environment, I'll gladly take a 614 any day of the week.

LNIR: 2013-03-05 - Trolled

181+210+178 = 569
Balls in Bag:  Surrender, Armor, Blackbird

To be perfectly frank, I put this series out of mind almost immediately after bowling it, so this recap might be a little short.  Or long.  Who knows.  Anyway, once again I let my opponent get to me, this time, before we event started.  I was giving up approximately 146,324 pins a game in handicap (okay, it was 65, but still), so I went in with a bad attitude, assuming that I'd have to be perfect to win.  That's always good, and always leads to perfection, right?

Not exactly.  It leads to pressing, and overthinking.  I started off just fine, but when my opponent ran 6 strikes in a row with his 14# bright orange house ball, I started trying to get way too perfect with the ball, instead of letting it face up and hit as I had in the first 4 frames, I started overthrowing it.  I missed a few spares, and game 1 was a wreck.

Game 2 was a bit of a bounce back, only really bad shot I threw was in the 10th frame, and obviously I missed the spare, but still put me in a good position going into the third game.  And in that third game, well, I'm not really sure what happened.  I was definitely pressing, and definitely trying way too many different shots early on, and never really getting comfortable with any of them.  I firmed up and struck in the 5th, but the 2nd pocket 4-10 of the night in the 6th really hurt me.  I strung the next 4, left a trademake Michael Henk 9 pin in the 10th, and that was all she wrote, another meh series.

Having way too hard of a time bowling against high handicap teams this year, moreso than previous years, and I'm not 100% sure why.  Something I need to get over, for sure.

PBA Leaves ESPN for CBS (UPDATE)

An update/elaboration on my original post.  So, it turns out, the PBA has signed a deal with CBS to show the SUMMER SWING on the CBS Sports Network, and that it's a "multi-year" agreement, that should definitely help the PBA financially.

However, nothing has been announced about the PBA Tour/League, and, via twitter:

"Len DeLuca represents the PBA and says it's in negotiations with ESPN "and multiple networks" for the existing PBA Tour and new PBA League." - https://twitter.com/Ourand_SBJ/status/311515625405165568

Official Release Here

Richgels has a great post on what this means for the PBA financially and in terms of future viability, but I'm not sure how meaningful it is, given that this release is (so far) just related to the Summer Swing, supposedly.

Hopefully this is a step in the right direction towards getting the PBA Tour restarted, and maybe even relevant again.  But for now, it just means that I can't watch the Summer Swing, because, well, I don't get CBSSN, and I'm not going to change my cable tiers just to watch bowling.

New threads!

Won't be long until all my clothes are bowling related,  I'm afraid. Got these items today: