Winning is a State of Mind

I’d like to share some ways to overcome the mental challenges that separate good players from the winner’s circle. Working hard and developing a good physical game is the beginning of the journey to winning, not the end. Your physical ability can only take you to a certain point in the sport. You must also play the lanes correctly to take advantage of your physical ability. Sometimes you will need to open your mind up to things that you believed were not an option on a particular lane condition.

Challenge What You Know

For example, I had once believed that getting the ball down the lane on shorter patterns was the most important consideration. I saw the hook and immediately grabbed a weaker bowling ball with a fine-grit sanding or polish to make sure I got the ball down the lane. Then, one day in the recently tour stop, we were bowling on a version of Viper, which is 37’ in length, and VERY clean back ends that caused the ball to change direction rather dramatically. I employed this strategy throughout qualifying, with good success on the first day and not so good on the second day.

A common way to “control the pocket” and smooth out the ball reaction is to use surface and pin placement to make the change in direction of the ball less dramatic. If you use a ball with the pin placed below the fingers and in the grip area (inside the boundary formed by the outsides of the finger holes, for a typical medium to high track player) you make the ball less dynamic and smooth out the reaction of the ball on sport patterns with high friction at the back of the lane. If there is enough friction, you can also use a urethane ball, which I used successfully in the last two games of qualifying to secure myself a spot in match play.

Here’s where it gets interesting. You would think that adding surface to the ball on a short pattern like this would NEVER work, right? Well, not so fast – if you get a situation where you can add surface to the ball and still control it, you can also make the ball smooth out and “burn off” some of the energy of the ball so the ball becomes more controllable. In fact, in match play I did just that, using a strong ball with a pin down drilling and a 1000-grit surface on a 37’ pattern, which gave me a controlled (and amazing) ball reaction.

Get Out of Your Own Way

Once you overcome the challenges of bowling well and reading the lanes, you need to be able to get out of your own way and achieve to your potential. There are a number of ways to do this, but one of the most effective, in my opinion, is to get back into a mind set where “it’s just bowling”. Sometimes we assign so much importance and create so much drama in competitive situations that the drama we create becomes the very thing that stops us from performing. In this same tournament I was able to stay relaxed, even joke around with people during competition – much as I do when practicing. Sometimes we just take ourselves too seriously!

However, a relaxed state of mind doesn’t mean that we don’t need to call up the ability to stay totally focused on each and every shot. Great collegiate coaches preach to their players that they can not waste any shot in a tournament. Competitive experience and the pain of missing a cut by a few pins (or one, as happened to me more than once) are painful reminders that every shot DOES count. You must call up that mental discipline to make every shot as consistent within the framework of what you’re trying to do as possible. After all, consistency produces a consistent, predictable ball reaction, doesn’t it?

Anything is Possible

The last hurdle in winning is to overcome barriers and believe that anything is possible. Sometimes you have to accomplish something before you really believe that you can break through a barrier. To get there, you need to mentally imagine yourself in the position you want to achieve. Essentially “act like you’ve been there” – imagine that you have already won a tournament before – this will reduce your anxiety when you get closer to the winner’s circle. This will take some of the “drama” out of winning a tournament. So, next time you practice, work on these items. Learn to relax during practice as you are learning to improve your game. Learning to change your game is a source of stress, and learning to relax during this situation will “teach” your body and your mind that it is ok to stay relaxed during other stressful situations.

As you learn to stay relaxed as each successive level and challenge comes along, you progress will continue, and you will get closer to the ultimate prize, a tournament victory.