Finally I've had the chance to experience a sport shot bowling league- and it's going to be a good summer in my eyes. The trek from where I live to Merrimack, NH is about 45 minutes- so I was really looking forward to seeing what this shot had to offer. After our initial league meeting and discovering that the format for the league had changed (there will be 4 sport patterns, 2 long and 2 short- with no one pattern being the same from week to week over the course of our 15 week season) we discovered that this week's pattern would be a 45 foot sport pattern. I tried to look at the graph and make sense out of what was out there, but I could quickly tell in practice that the first 9 boards were clearly out of bounds, as you maybe could ease out a head pin from the 9 board, if you threw it slow enough with enough revolutions. I debated starting with my Animal and thought the ball was burning out from the inside line, so I quickly switched to my Slash towards the end of practice.
Game one of my first ever sport league: I shot 221!!!! And it was a clean 221. I played straight up 11 with the Slash, moderate ball speed and made all of my single pin leaves (a lot of 6 pins when high, 3 pins when light). One 6 count after starting the night with a triple, that was my low count of the night.
Game two was a case of not focusing enough on the transition as well as spare shooting. I chopped 3 spares (3-5-6, 1-3-9, 2-8) and even though I had 5 strikes (making a ball change in the middle of game two to the Absolute Inferno) I shot 169. Decided from there to move two boards with my feet and try to swing a little from 13-10 as people were drying up the down and in line after 2 games (3 lefties, 3 righties).
Game three I left my only split (3-7-9), chopped a 2-4 to start the game, and missed a 6 pin in the 10th for a wonderful 170 game. So I shot 560 for the first night of league, my anchor bowler shot 590 and another gentleman on the pair shot 628 (playing super slow up the 10 board)...
I saw a lot of crankers shooting 130 games as they were determined to get the ball to come back from outside of 10. You make a good shot on a sport shot league- you usually get rewarded. But the punishment is equally as brutal, and I think it tells you where your game is at.
I love sport bowling- and we have 15 trio teams bowling in this league, which is a positive sign in my mind that you can get people to bowl on challenging conditions.
More to come in future weeks...
Matt
