I have been blessed to be around golf most of my life...and also blessed to have crossed paths with some of the top all time pros in bowling...sr amateur stars and current winning professionals on the tour and now occassionally run into some up and nationally known up coming juniors or just post juniors in bowling.
One thing that has struck me in general is the sort of negative view of the current crop of juniors and what I view as very self defeating attitudes they have versus say aspiring golfers and also the top bowlers of the past!
While in golf Pia Nillson has set up a whole set of mental and physical training aimed at golfers aspiring to shoot and envision the possibility of shooting 18 birdies in a round....
Or what she calls
Vision 54 Bowling on the other hand disdains any great scoring on top hat conditions.
ie Robert Mushtare.
Particularly damaging to bowling I believe is the impression that high scores on a top hat are not worth anything. (Our websites continual insults to our own resident high average superstar(Rev O!) The recent disdain for the accomplishment of Robert Mushtare.
Now I know that one of America's recent favorite pastimes is self loathing...I wonder why this has become such a dominant force in bowling....versus golf glorifies the stupendous score no matter the difficulty of course...as long as a course is called "regulation"...over 6000 yards!
The effect I believe is that many bowlers that are coached in mainstream programs have this sort of outlook. Any high scoring on a top hat is worthless. Having a knack for scoring well on a difficult condition is the only type of scoring to admire.... And I believe that bowlers spend so much time bowling on tough conditions...that when they get to cake they can't or haven't conditioned the mind to expect or picture themselves scoring unbelievable numbers.
Along these lines our current center is a frequent stopping point for junior gold programs and qualifying. Often I see guys that really look that they don't have games that would score high..on a tophat seem to do very well and then other guys with say "BIG" games really struggle! Many others are so overwhelmed that to me I can only imagine that Mom and Dad are making they stay with them game...as I see silly low scores!
At one time the Pro tour seemed to rotate thru a series of undefined set of conditions...some easy and high scoring...some hard and lower scoring. Some guys never contended much on the hard sites...some guys contended well on the easy sites. We divided players up in our minds that this guy was a "winner"came thru in the clutch or a "non winner". But a player did not have to be versatile over all conditions.
Nowadays a protourist really needs to be a jack of all trades to get on tour(all 5 patterns) but maybe not a master of any! Also there aren't many wide open scoring shots on tour(unless you count pattern E....Cheetah?)
The point of this is that high scoring on a top hat's is a skill. A fun skill to have and watch! I've seen posts by TGod that this great and different skill is not seen as much and I miss it!
Also because of the group think above I believe the several great junior bowlers that I meet are limiting their abiltity to shoot these Mushtare like scores when the conditions arrive because of their lack of mental training or even regard for these types of feats that are so exciting to watch but so bowling...politically incorrect at this time!
REgards,
LUckylefty
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Open the door...see what's possible...and just walk right on through...that's how easy success feels..
