Top Four Bowling Tips
As a “veteran” player, you get to know a lot of things that you wish you had learned much earlier in your career. Older is wiser is really another way to say that you’ve learned from the hard experience of making mistakes that burn you in the heat of battle (i.e. high levels of competition) and you learn not to do the things that get you in trouble. It really is the lesson of learning not to put your hand on the hot burner! There are many of these things that I wish someone had shared with me early in my career – I’d like to cover a few of these with you in this tip.
You Should Match your Ball Speed to your Rev Rate
If you are a lower revolution player, your ball needs more time to get into a roll and make a move to the pocket. If you are someone who has a lot of trouble getting the ball to hook off the breakpoint, lowering your ball speed might be the answer to higher scores. Similarly, you may also want to get the ball off your thumb cleaner and earlier, to generate more revolutions. Similarly, if you generate a lot of revolutions on the bal with slow speed, you will need to work on more ball
speed in order to get the ball down the lane. Either way, to maximize your ability, your ball speed and rev rate need to “match up.”
A Shorter Grip will Help You Roll the Ball Cleanly
I see so many people with spans that are too long, who literally have to “throw” the ball off their hand. The IBPSIA (International Bowling Pro Shop and Instructors Association, certification group for Pro Shop Operators) strongly recommends (this is not an absolute) that the span of your grip should be such that if you put your thumb all the way into the thumb hole, the half-way point between the first and second joints of each finger should be the location of the edge of your finger
holes. This will put the crease of the first joint of your fingers more than halfway across the fingers. Shorter, more relaxed grips help you get better, “cleaner” roll with less effort. This smooth roll is what allows the ball to “glide” over the lane and keeps it from over-reacting.
Your Launch Angle and Ball Speed are Critical
Simply put, your launch angle and speed dictate the quality of your shots. Direction and speed dictate more about where the ball is going and what it will do than anything else. Learn to make shots that go in the direction you want at the speed you want, and your scores will be higher and more consistent. Soft hands through the release generate a higher-quality, more repeatable game. If you attempt to rip the cover off the ball, you are likely to generate an erratic reaction that works well on house conditions, but fails miserably on demanding tournament conditions. As in many other sports, the ability to complete the athletic motion of releasing a bowling ball with the hand “softly” rolling the ball out onto the lane makes your reaction more consistent. Even power players, such as Tommy Jones, work to get the ball cleanly and softly off the hand, even opening the hand slightly at the release point. This is a major difference in today’s game from the way it was played 20 years ago. Powerful bowling balls and high concentrations of oil on the lane have created the need to control the power of the ball and maximize the roll.
Bowl One Frame at a Time
We all get too caught up with things that we can’t control. In bowling, you can’t control the shots in the past or in the future. So why do we spend so much time looking at the score monitors? They don’t give us ANY information that will help us make better shots, just more information that gets in the way of making good shots. Quit looking at the scores and focus in on making consistent shots. In competition, find the level at which you can be consistent, which might not be the best shot you can make. Stay at that level of execution throughout the event, and focus on making as many shots per game at that level as possible. The rest will take care of itself.
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