Recently, on these forums, Bob said that my local house shot (he's bowled here) was tougher than the THS.  I have a hard time judging since I virtually never anymore bowl anywhere else.  Well, this weekend I went down to a smallish Baker format 3 man tournament about 35 miles away.  Out of 54 shots I left 5 ten pins, two 6-10's, 2 four pins, a 4-9, and a 7 pin.  The other 43 were strikes (almost an 80% strike percentage.)  Did I throw the ball well?  NO and yes; off my hand the release was good, but my accuracy was terrible.  Here's the best example: along about game 10 we start with the front 9; my shots were 1) hit my target, dead flush strike 2) tug 8 (maybe 10 boards), slide into hole dead flush, strike, 3) miss 4 boards outside, turn on the dry, rack shredding strike.  I had almost 15 boards of area on that lane.  Granted, not every lane was quite that loose, but I had no less than 8 boards on any lane  - and I used almost every one of them.  I'm sorry folks, but this isn't bowling - it's scoring.  But it was sort of fun.

BTW, for the 16 games we bowled we had a total of 3584, including bonus pins.  We finished 3rd, 100 behind the winners.

(For those who don't know 3 person baker works like this:
Bowler A bowls the 1st, 4th, and 7th
B bowls the 2d, 5th, and 8th
C bowls the 3d, 6th, and 9th.
The tenth was bowled by whoever seemed to have the best look.
All frames bowled on the same lane.)

Mumzie, it was at a place called Orchard Lanes, in Lewiston Id.

Oh, yeah, I was also a bit lucky in that, at the last second, I tossed my Major Assault in the bag.  Tried to start with a Buzzsaw Silver, but it had too much on the backend; not knowing if the 315 layout MA would work I tried it and had an immediate great look.  Never moved until game 11 then did a 3 and 2 move and didn't have to move again.  


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"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." Oscar Wilde
Ragnar sure likes to throw his purdy Uranium Buzzsaw.



Edited on 2/21/2005 11:02 AM

And I would bet half the bowlers from this house would tell you how tough the lanes are.

I always thought the lanes I had bowled on were easy but you would hear grumbling from other “bowlers” around town that they were not.

But in the last couple of years by switching houses in one league and joining a travel league I have seen just how much easier other houses can be.

The amazing thing to me is that even in the easy house the averages are not that high compared to what you see elsewhere, a couple of low 230’s and a couple of 220’s and the rest are under 220. The normal leagues have only had a handful of honor scores shot. But the traveling scratch league shoots at least one honor score every time we visit the house. So I just believe their league base is weak.  

With the extremes in conditions that can be found it’s not really even the same game being played at times.