Bowling - Progress at Last!!

First, I would like to thank Tony, webmaster of BU for the excellent usability advice he sent me about my site. I should have known these things, but I think I was too close to the project to notice. It's always hard to expose yourself to the critical eye of others, but the results are so worth it.

Okay, I promised interesting articles, and I'm afraid that I'm not going to deliver today. Sorry. It's my blog.

I have been struggling since I started bowling again last fall. At that time, I was bowling games that were in the 60's. Yeah - not 600 series - a game with a score of 60... Like you get when you're 5 years old.

I'm left handed, but I think I have some of my dad's ambidextrious genes. When I had tendonitis in my left hand while I was in college, I was able to switch to my right hand to finish the season. (Illegal for a sanctioned league, but it was just for fun anyway...) I did far better right handed than left handed and probably should have stayed that way. I was effortlessly shooting games that were between 150 and 200 and even bowled a 226.

I stopped bowling when I started getting into competitive drum corps because I had too much on my plate. When I came back to it, I decided to switch back to my left hand because:

• My left hand is stronger.
• I'm left handed at everything else in the world (I think!)
• Every once in a while, I would get confused about where to put my feet. That doesn't happen when I stick with the left hand.

I finished the season with an average of 115. Not bad, considering I started at 60. But this season started three weeks ago, and it didn't look like improvement was coming.. In my first 6 games, I was averaging less than 110.

Today, I got my first glimmer of hope! I bowled a 159, 106 (doh!), and 179!!!! My team (which includes my father who has given up on trying to outwardly give me advice) even took all seven points!

So, my point, and there is a point, is that I want to write down the things I did today that I think helped me the most.

• I put a piece of tape in my thumb hole. My dad has been constantly commenting that I drop the ball... The tape made the ball feel better - I had more control.
• I concentrated on not bending forward. I think this is a HUGE problem of mine and I think that it also contributes to the ball dropping problem. It's like I have to always tell myself that the ball needs to get to the line before my shoulders.
• I worked on lining the inside of my elbow with my mark. I read something on the Internet that had an off-handed comment about the inside of the elbow pointing at the snack bar being a bad thing, and I realized that I never thought about that before.

So, there may be a glimmer of hope for my bowling, yet! Maybe my dad and my brother didn't steal all the talent where that's concerned after all..

It helps me - sorry to bore the rest of you!