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| Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: dkersten on December 09, 2015, 11:05:58 am --- --- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 09, 2015, 03:49:19 am ---I've found this conversation fascinating. I will say that it's a poor artist that blames his tools. I've never bowled with a league before but I used to enjoy playing fairly regularly. I used the crappy rented shoes and balls. Managed to get in the high 200's every game. I think people take it too seriously and that negatively effects their score. --- End quote --- Do you go golfing with a stick and get hole in ones much of the time too? Golf and Bowling share a lot of similarities. Both are games you play against yourself, your opponent's performance doesn't directly affect your own score or performance. The slightest changes in condition can greatly affect your shot. No matter how long you practice, perfection is unattainable. Like any sport, there has to be some inherently natural athletic ability to excel. Finally, equipment from 50 years ago until today has changed dramatically, allowing for someone with a less than perfect swing to achieve shots that would have been impossible a few decades ago. If anything, Bowling ball technology has had an even bigger impact on performance and consistency than Golf club and ball technology. Different reactive surfaces, different cores, different materials, and even the geometry used in drilling the ball are all HUGE when it comes to how the ball will work on any given lane/condition. After thousands of games thrown and tens of thousands of games witnessed, I can say with 100% confidence that throwing a plastic ball straight into the pocket is far less likely to result in a strike than throwing a reactive ball into the pocket at the proper angle (one that can't be reached from a straight shot). I have bowled for about 35 years now, and at my peak I was a ~190 average. I never had much athletic ability, and I never had the commitment to bowl so often that I could keep my skill up. My best game is only a 288, and I have had several 279's (one spare mid game) but never a perfect 300. I just don't have the focus and by the 8th or 9th strike I get inside my own head and make the slightest mistake that sends the ball a half inch in the wrong direction and miss the strike. I bowl with several bowlers who have thrown dozens of 300's in their lives and average well into the 220's. Around here that isn't all that easy because lane conditions are never very good, the climate swings in Montana can mean a lane that is perfect one week can be as dry as a concrete sidewalk the next, and depending on humidity and temperature, can dry up from one game to the next so much that you have to make a 20 board adjustment to your shot to stay in the pocket. The thing is, you can be the most consistent shot in the world, but the shot that gets a strike one frame may not the next because everything has changed. The other bowlers have shifted the oil around with their own shots, the pinsetters don't set the pins down perfectly every time, the pins each are slightly different and will react differently to being hit, oil evaporates off the lane as you bowl. Even if your ball ends up hitting the same exact spot at the same exact speed, angle, and spin as your last shot, you could end up leaving several pins. This game is as much mental as it is about the ball you throw, and your equipment is just as important as your ability to adjust each shot and predict where it will go. --- End quote --- Well all of that would make sense except... like I said, used the crappy rental stuff and always got high 200's I'm not that good of a bowler either. Bowling is a very easy game up until those bonus frames, if you can't get the regular sets without a 300 dollar ball, might I suggest curling. ;) Your analogy makes zero sense btw... the equivalent for golf would be rental clubs. Mind you I don't play golf because it's too snooty, but I have seen people play really well with crap clubs. |
| HaRuMaN:
$300 for 2, but anyway. Best thing having your own equipment does for you? Adds consistency. When I put my shoes on, I know how they are going to slide. I know how my ball feels on my hand, how the holes are drilled for my fingers, how it releases, how the ball reacts, etc. |
| Howard_Casto:
See now that is a sensible answer. Fair enough. |
| dkersten:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 09, 2015, 02:47:34 pm ---Well all of that would make sense except... like I said, used the crappy rental stuff and always got high 200's I'm not that good of a bowler either. Bowling is a very easy game up until those bonus frames, if you can't get the regular sets without a 300 dollar ball, might I suggest curling. ;) Your analogy makes zero sense btw... the equivalent for golf would be rental clubs. Mind you I don't play golf because it's too snooty, but I have seen people play really well with crap clubs. --- End quote --- If you could consistently bowl high 200's with a plastic house ball you could be one of the top 5 bowlers in the U.S. A 240-260 game is missing 2 strikes (mid-game) out of 10 frames (but still closing them). Unless you are bowling by Amish standards, you aren't picking up a plastic ball and getting the 9-11 strikes per game required for high 200's. Sorry, I'm sure you have had some high games, but this is too much of a big fish story to even come close to believing. Hey, I have thrown plenty of 279 games, and I have even had some stellar series, but even after a really good night of bowling I will come back a couple days later and end up with a 500 series and go home wondering how I could go from near perfection to mediocrity in so short a time. Anyone can get lucky once, and just when you think you have it figured out you learn how much luck can influence a series and how little you really know about making adjustments to your game. BTW, anyone who can hit a good golf game with crappy clubs would improve their game by several strokes with a good set of clubs. In golf, good quality equipment isn't snake oil, it's proven technology that can be used to improve a game. In bowling, it's even more influential. The best bowlers in the world would lose 30-50 pins off their average (or much more) with plastic balls over the reactive balls with offset cores - it makes even that much more of a difference. I bowled with a guy who had a 240 average with his right hand and established a 190 average with his left. Just because he could bowl really well left handed didn't mean he should just bowl left handed. You don't have to spend a lot -- $130 will buy a perfectly good strike ball and $30 will get you a perfectly good spare ball for corner pins. From there, money you spend is to fine tune your game for different conditions but the results are mostly diminishing. It is more important to find the RIGHT ball for you, whether it is the $300 ball or the $130 ball. A few years ago I got back into the game after a 4 year break. I bought a new ball and I was a sniper with it. I could put that ball within a quarter inch of wherever I wanted it, every time. But even though I could bury it in the pocket 10 out of 10 times, 70% of the time it left a 10 pin (and I averaged at least 1 7-10 split per series). I grew to hate that ball. I am still deadly accurate with it but something about it combined with my shot leaves 10 pins all day long. So I changed to a different ball and although my accuracy dropped a lot (more aggressive ball, less predictable on the oil), my strike average increased twofold. I picked up 15 pins of average once the ball was broken in and I never looked back. When it got saturated and needed rejuvenation I grabbed that older one and was again in the pocket every shot but the nightmare of the 10's came back and I remembered why I switched. |
| dkersten:
--- Quote from: HaRuMaN on December 09, 2015, 03:04:25 pm ---Best thing having your own equipment does for you? Adds consistency. When I put my shoes on, I know how they are going to slide. I know how my ball feels on my hand, how the holes are drilled for my fingers, how it releases, how the ball reacts, etc. --- End quote --- This is true, but it isn't the whole story. You simply can't achieve the averages with cheap plastic house balls as you can with any decent reactive ball. If you could, then pros would use plastic balls. None do. Not a single one, at least not for strike shots, because even a perfect straight shot is going to leave pins standing more often than with a ball that is transferring more energy into the pins. To not use a reactive ball would be to handicap yourself against those who do. Simple as that. |
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