I enjoy reading Bill Taylor because he is like the Grandfather of coaching. He was coaching bowlers before I was born. It's fine with me if he wants to just sit around and tell stories about the old days. I have learned a lot in my life by sitting at the country store listening to the old guys. He and I seem to have gotten our coaching abilities from the same place;we were born with them. We analyze things in much the same way. II had never read a word of Bill Taylor's writings until he started writing for BTM. He is the only coach other than me I have seen write anything about arm to leg length ratios.
I hope that Bill Taylor has managed to carve out a comfortable living from the world of bowling. I know it is very hard to do. I have wished many times my father had been a golfer instead of a bowler. I could be helping guys wearing
funny looking plaid pants ( does Guppy Troup count?
) and making big bucks from it. But no, I like Bill Taylor pretty much help folks cause it feels so go to do so. If I am lucky enough to reach the years in age that Taylor is today, I hope I still want to sit and watch very poor videos that bowlers from across the country have mailed in as Taylor does today.
I know most of you that read this board and BTM are hungry for knowledge and you want every article written by every coach to teach you something new. I know the bowlers that have been bowling for a few years have read everything Jowdy has to say. Keep in mind that we have new bowlers entering our world every year. They have not had the chance to read all that stuff that has become old hat to us.
I will also tell you that there is only so much you can write as a coach. I now find myself writing for a bowling news paper "The Bowling News", a new international magazine "7-10 Split" published out of canada and sent to 4 or 5 countries... and of course my website. I have only been writing a year or so and I am already struggling each month to come up with new topics. I have so far limited my writing to only meat and potatoes "how to do it" articles instead of opinion articles which would be much easier. You have to keep in mind that I can only write about things that I think I can explain in words and I am no writer believe me.
I am sure that many of you on this board have read questions by a new poster about his release or something. You know the answer but when you start thinking of how to put it into words it gets very hard. Some questions I don't answer simply because I don't have time. Some answers would fill the whole page (as you can see from this post). I do this sometimes with the email questions I get. I don't answer them until I have the time to give a good answer.
Chris_P,
I really enjoyed your response. A lot of my articles start out looking like that then I trash them and start over. When I write an article I ask myself one question. "Did you tell them how to do it"? It is pretty easy to come up with the things that can be wrong in bowler's games. I see that in articles all the time. They don't always go into enough detail on how to fix the problem.
Ron Clifton
Edited on 10/27/2003 10:31 AM
Edited on 10/27/2003 10:38 AM
