BallReviews
General Category => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: dmonroe814 on April 08, 2013, 10:36:29 AM
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Just got back from the nationals.
Got my house to set up national patterns. Practiced 2 weekends about 20 games. Had the right equipment, knew where I was going to throw...I was ready.
Figured the line might be a board or two different from my house, so I Spent Team (528) and Doubles (479) trying to find the "Magic" line.
After kicking myself and blowing $200 in bracket money, I gave up. I just picked a line, and made small adjustments from there, making sure I was executing to the best of my ability. 630 in Singles. If I had been focusing on execution instead of the Magic line, I probably would have bowled a 1900 instead of 1600. I had some normal carry issues in singles, but nothing like Team and doubles.
Lanes are a little slicker in Team, but you can probably use the same ball for Team and minors. Just practice you execution and timing. Pick a target and go.
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Don't beat yourself up too badly. Thousands of guys never do figure out that there is no magic ball or magic line on tournament patterns.
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How did your practice play vs the stadium? We had 4 weeks on the nationals pattern (2 weeks each on team and s/d) and it played completely different when I got to the stadium. I was actually surprised at how much more hook I got up in Reno vs at home.
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How did your practice play vs the stadium? We had 4 weeks on the nationals pattern (2 weeks each on team and s/d) and it played completely different when I got to the stadium. I was actually surprised at how much more hook I got up in Reno vs at home.
Actually my house patter hooked more than the Nationals. I knocked the polish off my Lucid, but that was the only difference. I had to play the angles a little tighter. And as I said before, I neeeded to execute.
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Here is what is debatable about Nationals. In order to place high in the team event, you need 5 guys to play together in a similar spot on the lane and break it down. Thing is.......you MUST pick carefully who your teammates are. Reason is because if you dont, then you have no chance to place high regardless of the line you play. A guy who is pretty rev dominate is not going to be able to play up 7-8-9 and be successful just the same as a guy who is pretty speed dominate. You need 5 guys with similar games using similar surfaces with similar ball strengths.
What I am going to have to do, is take something from 10 years ago or use my Tornado to have any chance of being a "team player". There is no way that I may be able to play that far right unless I can increase my ball speed from 17.5 to closer to 20mph. Same as a guy who is speed dominate. Someone like that will need to use something with a bunch of surface; say 500-800 grit. They will not be able to use 2000-4000 with a 200 rev rate throwing 20mph.
In order to have a high scoring team, you will need 5 guys that are pretty matched up with their ball speed and rev rates; say a guy who is 17mph with 300 rev rate or 20mph with 500 rev rate.
To practice at home is almost useless unless you can exactly duplicate everything (lane surface, pattern, volume, same oil being used, etc...) You are almost better off saving your cash and just doing the Showcase Lanes and even then, such as last year, it may not be exactly to what you will see when the arrows go up. Evey year is a different experience and yet the area you play on the lane is going to be similar each time.
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I definately agree you need to choose carefully who you have to have on your team. You all have to work together. And be willing to do whats best for the team to work things out. But I dont 100% agree or disagree with not having a high rev guy part. Look at the team leading now. Scott newell is an amazing bowler and a high rev rate but ccan use his rev rate to help the team and play right to help the team. Not all high rev guys can only play in. But thats just a side note. The teams having success work together and do whats best for everyone and not just themselves. When coming up with our team we know each others games very well. Work together and are out to help each other.
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I definately agree you need to choose carefully who you have to have on your team. You all have to work together. And be willing to do whats best for the team to work things out. But I dont 100% agree or disagree with not having a high rev guy part. Look at the team leading now. Scott newell is an amazing bowler and a high rev rate but ccan use his rev rate to help the team and play right to help the team. Not all high rev guys can only play in. But thats just a side note. The teams having success work together and do whats best for everyone and not just themselves. When coming up with our team we know each others games very well. Work together and are out to help each other.
I agree with you 100%. I am not saying that you cant have a high rev rate guy. I am saying that you cant have the rev dominate guy and expect him to play up the outside/track area and be successful. Its one thing to be 20mph with 500rpms and be 16mph with 500rpms. The guy at 16mph has no chance of playing outside and scoring well unless maybe he is using something like a polished urethane. My main point was that choose your team carefully if you are trying to place high in the team event. Just assembling 5 guys averaging 220+ on a THS doesnt always equate to shooting 3200+ at Nationals. All I am saying, yo!! :)
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Thats very true. Every year I read on here of some guy whos a 230 avg THS write a post about shooting 1600-1700 and say the shots impossible this and that. Its a reverse block blah blah blah. You have to practice and be prepared to bowl this tournament. You only get 9 games to make it count so you want to give yourself and team the best opportunity. Choose wisley.
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TwoHand,
Actually you are incorrect in your statement. For better or worse Nationals isn't about a 5 man team anymore, it is truly about a 10 man team. You need 10 guys, all willing to work together for the greater good, playing similar lines breaking down the lanes correctly in order to achieve high scores. All the teams that have won the last 5 years, have done this. Riggs has 10 guys going committed to the plan. Nicholas J Pro Shop has 2 teams. The teams at the top this year are part of two team groups.
In regarding styles, while it helps to have people with all similar styles, it isn't always available. What I think you need is the majority of people with similar styles. Have one high rev player playing inside of everyone won't wreck the pattern too bad, especially this year with the new Ice oil. But having 2 or 3 of them will. Having one speed dominant person throwing a high grit surface won't wreck the pattern but having multiple one's will. Actually if you balance it out right having one of each can actually help. The speed dominant player can play a few boards right of everyone, drying up that line. The rev dominant player can be inside of everyone, usually throwing something more polished pushing the oil down....that creates a big window for the others right in the middle, miss right hit the dry created by the high grit ball, miss left hit the oil pushed down by the polished ball.
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There are always exception to the rules. While it may halp and thebpast few years have shown 10 people working together you can still get it done with just 5. The 10 is only for one event. Of course its a good chance to really make theblanes as easy as you can. But then go to d/s and its 6 on a pair. Basically 1 team working together.
My example being some verybgood friends of mine just bowled. Junior team susa support 1. They shot 3521 and 10247 or something along those lines to place as of right now 2nd and leading what I considered the hardest eagle to win which is team all events. They are leading team AE by almost 200 and they didnt have a companion team. They just went out as a 5 man team.
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BHS,
Are you sure about that? I thought Erik V's (I am not even going to attempt to spell and butcher his last name, lol) wife Amanda bowled with him as well. I read where she is retiring from bowling due to health issues. So was she just bowling D/S? Also if they were alone, why were they Junior Team USA Support 1 as if there is a Junior Team USA Support 2 as well? Just asking the questions because I know in the past these guys came with 2 teams. It doesn't matter how good of bowlers are on the second team (although it helps to have better bowlers) as long as they are committed to playing the same area.
As far as D/S, yes there are only 6 people per pair. But if you read the article on bowl.com Erik mentioned how they still worked together and how it took longer to break down the pattern. Having the 10 people make sure that 1 pair and 2/3rds of a second pair are all playing the same area and help make it easier to put up such an impressive Team AE score (4th best all time I believe).
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there isn’t even enough entries to have 6 on every pair for S/D this year. A lot of the pairs when I was there (this past week) only had 4 per pair. Also the amount of shifts are way down to. This like everything else bowling is just falling apart.
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there isn’t even enough entries to have 6 on every pair for S/D this year. A lot of the pairs when I was there (this past week) only had 4 per pair. Also the amount of shifts are way down to. This like everything else bowling is just falling apart.
I agree with this pretty strongly (at least regarding the tourney), though there are a lot of reasons for it. The tourney being in Reno over and over is one. The economy and costs of going to Reno is another. The realization by some bowlers that they have no chance of even seeing a check from the tourney is yet another. The sport as a whole is in decline too and has been for some time.
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Guys, I didn't mean to start a long conversation about this. If you want to win an eagle, then by all means get 10 world class bowlers that can work together and be sure you are one of them. Practice on sport conditions with the rest of the team and go do it.
But if you are like 90% of us, you get 5 guys together, hopefully they average over 180 on a house shot. Go to the tournament and execute your best with guys that are mostly spray and pray.
My brother is 80 years old and I only get to see him once or twice a year, so I go with him. I am just kicking myself because I spent 6 games looking for a line and forgot to execute.
Next year will be better. An eagle is a bird that lives in the mountains. I have as much chance catching one of them as I do winning one at the nationals.
Good luck to you all.
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dmonroe814 - I feel the same way. Am i ever going to win any event, nope. Am i ever going to break even on brackets, probably not. Last year we cashed team event, $26 a person. This year we inished about projected to cash lien for team and doubles. I see my dad once a year and its for a week at the open. As long as I bowl equal to or better then previous year I am pretty happy.
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Jorge,
I do apologize I didnt know they had a companion team. Jeff mersch is one of my very good friends and when we were talking about his trip he didnt mention a companion team. Last year they had a companion team of dave osullivan, pj haggerty, ronnie sparks, clay herbach (I know I didnt spell that correct) and shawn ryan who used to work the hammer booth. Thisbyear timing and things didnt work out to travel together as a companion team hence why I didnt know if they had another team with then. Last year it was support 1 and support 2.
We arent going out with a companion team. I took the place of shawn ryan on eriks last years companion team so we will see how it goes.
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bhs,
You may very well be correct that they bowled alone this year. I knew they had a companion team last year, and maybe Amanda was the extra doubles bowler, since she was having health issues. If they did do this with only 5 people, then it is even more impressive then the team breaking the record.
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By what I can tell amanda was on a companion team. Her doubles scores are in classified division so its safe to say, and in no way trying to criticize or put any team down, that it wasnt a completely stout 10 people. It wasnt like the companion teams from last year thats for sure. Thats why I considered them mostly doing it as a great 5 person team. Either way their bowling is good for 5 or 10 people.
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bhs,
Well I don't know any of them personally, but before her health issues, Amanda was a great bowler....she may have been in classified as her average was low enough as she returned to bowling after surgery (these things I read on the bowl.com article as Erik talked about it the emotions of Amanda retiring from bowling). And that was my point earlier, usually it is better to have a companion team of good competitive bowlers, but it might be better to sacrifice some skill to get bowlers who can match up with your gameplan. AS long as the other team was following the plan, it would allow the "main" team to carve the lanes to their liking and allow them to score well. In either case, it was great bowling. Many teams come in with plans, but can't put together the kind of set that these guys did.
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bhs,
Well I don't know any of them personally, but before her health issues, Amanda was a great bowler....she may have been in classified as her average was low enough as she returned to bowling after surgery (these things I read on the bowl.com article as Erik talked about it the emotions of Amanda retiring from bowling). And that was my point earlier, usually it is better to have a companion team of good competitive bowlers, but it might be better to sacrifice some skill to get bowlers who can match up with your gameplan. AS long as the other team was following the plan, it would allow the "main" team to carve the lanes to their liking and allow them to score well. In either case, it was great bowling. Many teams come in with plans, but can't put together the kind of set that these guys did.
I agree Jorge, most of these groups are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. I'm pretty sure Riggs has stated that his group splits all winnings between the "team" which i believe he stated that that included brackets as well. I think I read somewhere that Matt Mcneil was in a similar situation before with splitting all of the winnings, but I could be wrong
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Dmonroe,
I think this is great conversation. You posted what you saw and others have shown that you were spot on with your observations, and from there we have discussions on the actual laneplay and what is needed to improve one's scores, which is the premise of your original post, to impart knowledge from your first hand experience to help others do better. I am no contender for an Eagle. I do hold onto the dream that one day everything will come together for either me, me and partner, or my team and I might have a chance to win an Eagle. I was close to averaging 200 at Nationals for my 12 years there, until the last 2 years where I bowled some of the worst scores of my life. I attribute some of it to poor execution on my part, but some was due to our team not working together. I had 4-5 guys playing inside of me last year, as I tried to play the line Bill Hall suggested was the way to play the lanes. I told everyone that strategy, but some didn't like the look they had there and decided to move in to a more "comfortable" playing area. I had about 4-5 good frames until the oil pushed into my line and my scores started to go down. When I tried to move inside that oil, I hit the dry they had created and go overhook. And if I tried to move deeper, I didn't have the right equipment or surfaces to get a constent corner. I saw first hand what happens when teams do not work together, and I caught the brunt of it with a 450ish team set. Was it all others, no. Some was poor execution on my part as I said, but if we would have worked together, none of us would have had to have been as accurate as we would have created area. I mention this only to show that no matter what skill level you are at, or what age....working together is important for the group as a whole to allow you to bowl as good as you can. For some that is Eagles, for some that is top 100, for others that is just cashing.
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Storm,
You are correct with Riggs' group. He may come on and comment further, but from what I have read in his blogs the bracket winnings are split amoung all 10 bowlers. I believe they pool their monies and enter a few team members into the brackets, then the winnings are pooled and distributed out, probably based on how much each individual put into the total pot. These are just guesses on my part though. I am not sure if the split the tournament winnings too, but it would make sense if they had some sort of split between the two teams. Most of the teams with chances for Eagles, I would think have some sort of arrangement to help out the companion teams, who are usually good bowlers in their own right, just not to the level of the "A" team, as it were. I would assume McNeil and his team are the same way, but don't know for sure.
Further on this....this seems like a no brainer....as I said in my last post, my game was affected by choices others made last year. One reason for this was they had money invested in the brackets on themselves (as did I). They wanted to do the best they could in order to get a return on that investment.....and to do that, meant deviating from the way it was thought best to play the lanes. What I think they, and others that do this fail to realize is that by sticking to a plan, you may sacrifice a few pins early, but you create a condition that will allow you to make up those pins and more later on. You create a more playable shot, an easier shot for everyone. They way Riggs' team and others handle this is to remove that factor from the equation. If everyone benefits when the "A" team does well, then everyone will be more committed to follow the plan. Your investment isn't on yourself, as much as it is on the team(s). Without making this step change in thinking, even very good teams won't contend for an Eagle.