Like you, I am concerned about bowlings future.  It just gets harder and harder each year to find people to bowl leagues with me.

Looking back over the past 45 years, I have noticed one major difference in bowlings attraction.  MONEY.  Up through the mid 1980s it was possible to realize a return on your investment in bowling, either through league prize funds, or through tournament participation.

Making money bowling in todays climate is limited to a very few select bowlers.  Either the ones with exceptional ability or those who manipulate their average to gain advantage in the handicap tournaments.

I live in the St Louis area, during the time frame mentioned above, we used to have a weekly handicap tournament that drew around 200 entries every weekend.  

Now, it is impossible to find a tournament.  Entries dropped off so much it was no longer lucrative to run them.  This was mainly due to what we felt were “sandbaggers”.

Just possibly, we can revive the competitive nature of bowling if we can once again  convince the bowling public that the handicap tournaments are fair and the chance of sandbagging has been reduced.  Without tournaments, there is little incentive for the average bowler to consider committing to a 32-36 week league schedule.

Here are a few ideas I have gleaned from friends and fellow bowlers.

Add a section to the “Find A Member” on the Bowl.com website for tournament averages.  This could be in the same format that currently shows last years league average.  We would also need a section that shows money won.

Currently, we haven’t any way of checking to see if an entrant has won money in past tournaments or not.  Without this information, we can’t invoke the rerating rule.

We would also like to change the way current averages are compiled.  Currently we start every bowler off with a new average every year.  People who want to manipulate their average simply bowl lower scores the first few months.  By the time they have 60-70 games in on the league, bowling their true average doesn’t affect their handicap except by a few pins.

Since we already have the rule established that 21 games or more constitute a legal average, why not just have a rolling average over the past 21 games.  This would give a truer picture of a bowlers ability than the current method.

I would give the tournament directors the following guidelines in establishing a bowlers average.

Current average over the past 21 games.
Ending average for the preceding year.
Current tournament average.
Highest tournament average with winnings in excess of $300.

I feel if we can once again promote tournament play where the average bowler has a chance to compete and earn money, we can once again start filling the leagues.  

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~~~SrK - Have balls, will travel

Spending the kids inheritance one tournament at a time.

Opps, I forgot the most important part.

As everyone can tell, I'm not the best writer around.  If anyone wants to redo it, feel free to do a cut and paste and send it to me.

Really need help getting it to make sense.

My feelings are that bowling is strictly recreational now.  Not many ways to make it profitable for the bowler.  It didn't use to be that way and bowling was booming.


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~~~SrK - Have balls, will travel

Spending the kids inheritance one tournament at a time.

I see nothing wrong with it as written.  And, I'd sign on in a heartbeat.  Good work Darrold.  I don't have a clue how difficult it might be to undertake your proposals, but I think they do go to the heart of the matter.
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"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,"
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