Friday the 7th is the day of travel to head to Houston to bowl in a Singles Scratch Tournament held by Win Or Go Home Bowling. The car is packed of bowling ball, clothes, the wife and dogs. Made it in to Houston around 10pm to avoid as much of the traffic as possible. Went straight to bed in order to be ready to go by 7:30am.

I arrive to Palace Lanes in Houston to get ready to bowl. There were talks of the pattern being 44' and pretty flat. I went to my old faithful Storm Marvel-S to start get a read on how that pattern is reacting. I also tried my Storm Crux in practice as well but that thing hooked early, I am talking just after the arrows hooking! I stuck with my Marvel-S playing 17 at the arrows to 8ish at the breakpoint. I had some room for error on getting to the pocket. My first two games were 198 and 255. So I thought I was on to something decent for this 7 game qualifier.

The 3rd game was when it all went down hill. I started moving left with the Marvel-S and started running into over/under reactions. One shot would over hook on me and another would under hook for me. So I decided to change to a Storm Hy-Road Pearl/Storm Byte depending on the overall reaction I was getting from pair to pair. These games were primarily my fault due to inconsistent releases. The last five games went as so - 193-205-202-182-215. I was averaging roughly 4 single pins each game and just under 1 split a game. Again part of the issue was me throwing the ball. I was moving left just as other bowlers were doing so due to the shot breaking down. I just could not get a handle on what release was coming off my hand. I ended up finishing 34 out of 72 bowlers. Not the worst by any means but sure could have been better! These are things that will happen to all bowlers at a given time. Learn from it because a pattern/place may play like this in the future and hopefully I will have an idea on how to beat it next time out.

No matter how you end up throwing the ball down lane, make sure it is consistent. It will be much easier to get a read off a consistent throw, as to where if you do something different on each toss, it will be hard to make the correct moves. Remember to enjoy the game and as always Practice Practice Practice!

Steve Lemke Bowling.com SFA NCAA Coach