For those of you that bowl with a curve, you are probably the envy of a lot of people that are perplexed about how that is even possible. What the observers don't understand is that by bowling with a curve, we are actually making the game considerably more complicated for ourselves.
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There are lots of different ways to use a curve but the problem that an intentional curve can introduce into your game are many. They include but are not limited to the following
- can you put the same amount of curve on each throw of the ball?
- can you curve the ball and still intentionally hit a certain straight forward trajectory (most people can't!)
- how is the oil going to impact what effect your curve actually has on the game (hint: It's a LOT!)
- Are you going to wear out your wrist quickly by creating the motion necessary to get a curve in the first place?
If you look at the above image in the past I was always using either the method on the far right, or the one in the middle. But lately and this is mostly due to the unreliable oiling methods at our local lanes, this was producing too much of a curve that would result in me missing the pocket of the 1/2/3 pins and ending up with 3-5 pins on the left or even worse in rare situations, curving and doing a "drive by" on all the pins and hitting none of them.
Therefore I have decided to adapt the far left approach where I am still aiming towards essentially the same spot on the center part of the lane, but because my ball is moving to the right and spinning to the left, the hook "bites" a lot later.
One of the major advantages of bowling with a curve is that you are far less likely to end up with horrible splits. This is true even if you hit the 1 pin dead-center because the ball will still be moving to the left (or right if you are left handed) and therefore are going to hit the other pins in the triangle head on as well. For straight bowlers, a dead center hit on the 1 pin almost always results in a horrible split with the dreaded 7/10 being the most common.
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A 7/10 split is nearly impossible to pick up. The professional bowlers have about a 5% pick up rate and even this machine they have that tests bowling balls and can roll the ball anywhere, at any speed, in PRECISELY the exact point the users of the machine want it to with exactly the amount of RPM's they want it to, can only barely achieve a 25% pickup rate on this split. We have never had anyone make this shot in the now nearly 4 years that we have been running our league.
So while I deviated from the main topic, this is one of the main reasons that if you can bowl with a curve, you should. I don't think I have had a 7/10 split in 2 years because they are incredibly unlikely when you curve.
I decided on our practice day of bowling, which was yesterday, that I am going to approach the throw line from the left instead of the right like I used to. Keep in mind that I am NEVER aiming at the pins but instead am aiming at the arrows that are something like 10-15 feet away from where you throw the ball. If you can hit these arrows, the rest will fall into play. Another thing that I do is am attempting to let the pendulum momentum of the ball handle the speed rather than trying to throw the ball with any sort of real force behind it that I create. The reason for doing this is consistency: How are you ever going to be able to throw the ball using your own arm strength at exactly the same way every single time? The pros can do this but they are on lanes with perfect conditions and bowl 10 games or more a day. I bowl 3-4 games twice a week.
The only problem with this method is that when it comes to single-pin pickups for a spare, I have to adjust once again. I am incapable of throwing a ball straight but I can limit the amount of spin I get by the way that I hold the ball in my hand.
I am around a 130 average bowler, which is not great. But on Tuesday I bowled 4 games: 147, 136, 168, and 157 which is an average of 152 points per game. This is 22 point higher than my average so I think I might be on to something here. Our league competition day is tomorrow so let's see if this idea actually holds water.
Keep in mind that I have had many different strategy changes in the past 4 years and almost none of them have worked out! haha