Hi All,
I recently wrote an article questioning the "straight and hard" convention for spare shooting.

http://tamerbowling.com/index.php/spare-shooting-questioning-convention/

May raise some controversy or discussion, but please let me know what you think.
I would be happy to also get other coaches' opinions.

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www.TamerBowling.com
Everything Bowling, coaching tips, ball reviews, General bowling discussions
USBC Certified Level I

Hi Gene,
I get what you're saying.  However, if you watch the PBA telecasts, you will notice that many pro bowlers do throw their spare shots much harder than their strike shots.  I can see that a straighter ball, not fighting the friction caused by side rotation, may have increased speed, but not like Robert Smith or Sean Rash.  Although these are extreme example, I am concerned that youth do take this, as you say colloquialism, to heart and actually practice it.  I see house bowlers do it all the time.
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www.TamerBowling.com
Everything Bowling, coaching tips, ball reviews, General bowling discussions
USBC Certified Level I

From my perspective I believe there is a significant difference in speed when you throw plastic at spares.  My typical speed with my strke ball is around 15 MPH. When shooting spares I throw plastic, take my hand out of the shot, and do not throw it any harder, but my speed now is in the 21 MPH range.....

I throw it hard, else for some reason I don't always hit my target arrow and am actually less accurate.  Feels like I can get lazy with my targeting when I slow down my arm swing, may just be psychological for that issue.  The second reason though is when I throw it less than perfectly straight then the speed makes up for that.  I can reduce my hooking potential if I make sure it's thrown fast.  Besides that I normally throw pretty fast as it is for my strike ball, am speed dominant, so it is what I'm used to doing.  My strike balls are usually at about 17-18 MPH, that's what I naturally throw, but can slow it down for long oil.  My spare ball goes about 20.5 MPH or so, sometimes 19 MPH, depends usually on how much oil there is I'm guessing (so retains speed from my release from the oiler lanes not having friction).  Also for buckets and groups of pins, a hard fast plastic spare ball has more chance to blow the group up completely and get every pin.  I recently tried urethane for spares, it's ok (An Ogre Urethane, 1500 polish, hard urethane ball), I do like it too.  I might be switching back to plastic though combined with the Triax Spare system I found online which seems to calculate out every spare straight and all the splits etc.  It seems when truly throwing a perfectly straight ball, and choosing something like the middle arrow (4th) for every spare to cross, the plastic ball is perfectly straight and gives me more percent of chance for accurate hits.  The Ogre Urethane works ok, but reduces my chance if it's dry and I don't release perfectly straight and with full speed.  So there's less percentage of chance from reducing speed with the urethane, if the conditions or minor fluctuations in my release happen.  Usually with the plastic ball I track right over my thumb hole, so I release very straight, but the Ogre Urethane doesn't do this (assume the fact it has a good weight block off center of the CG in it).  So that says there's some more dynamics going on with it and with the plastic thrown hard it truly goes straight in more percentage of throws.  So for me that's why I seem to be stuck with plastic and speed for spares, otherwise I seem to drop in percent of converted spares.  Plus it's kind of fun to wack the pins that hard and watch people cringe that don't bowl much see a 20 MPH 16lb plastic ball hit single pins, especially open bowlers who are being annoying and not understanding how to wait and other things.

It's definitely a very good topic to talk about more.  I've found there's a lot of cloudy information on spare shooting in bowling.  I'm surprised that even back in 80's PBA broadcasts they talk about shooting straight, in 90's they often say your crazy to hook at single pin spares.  Yet even today you see lots of people that hook at single pin spares, which is ok on some oil patterns but seems like a harder thing to change in different conditions instead of standardize yourself with one way.  Also it's strange to me to see college bowlers in the NCAA who seem to often hook at spares on sport shots.  So it confuses me, I don't understand why it's often talked about on high levels as straight is the only safe way.  Yet in other places you see high level athletes in College bowling not following this guidance.  Of course it's all up to the individual, but from what I've seen of information out there about it can see why some individuals may not always be directly given the seemingly logical information to me, that throwing straight at most spares has a track record of being more accurate (WRW jr as example, Mark Roth threw straight too).  Also it's interesting, about the speed of a persons normal throw, maybe that could be seen as a factor in what they use and how they convert spares.  Like a speed dominant player like myself can throw my reactive ball, just less hand in it, and usually get it straight across anything.  Yet a person with a 15 MPH ball probably would have a lot harder time doing that consistently.  So definitely a great topic to talk about, and really like your articles on it since they got me thinking and are really timely to me right now since I'm going through figuring out this myself for my game.

What I hate is when the guys throw their spare balls > 20MPH, then the lane disables showing the speed for the remainder of the session.
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14lb Animal | 13lb WD

I agree that harder is not necessarily better... I only throw it "harder" when I leave a split and need some sort of pin to bounce somewhere along the lines