Karma

I finally received my new bowling ball. It's a Karma (Pearl) from Brunswick, 15 pounds, green and blue with yellow finger grips installed.

Dave (the manager at the alley) and I went to Niles to get it drilled. He's a nice guy and even referred to me as his friend, and you know what? That's pretty cool. Good to be friends with someone that one was assigned to guard Derrick Rose. (That's another story, but since it's not mine, I won't tell it.)

Anyway, I bowled six games afterwards, and if you take out the first game of 115, I averaged 160 over the next five games. That's pretty damn good. A 160 average? Outstanding.

Plus, I figured out something halfway through my last game. If I intentionally keep my backswing short, I can really get a ton of revolutions on the ball. The first time I tried this, the ball was only a few boards away from going into the gutter, but it broke like mad and plowed down all ten pins. If only my thumb wasn't in bad shape, maybe I would've bowled even more, but a dozen games over two days is a lot of wear and tear.

So I'm posting this to remind myself: short backswing. Continue to slide with your fifth step. Keep the ball in front of you. (Translation: don't put spin on the ball until late in the follow-through, when the ball's nearly in front of you.)

If you can work on keeping your wrist bent forward, you can put a little more velocity on the ball while still getting the revolutions.

My footwork's been consistently good. The short backswing is keeping my arm on the correct plane more often. I think I might be able to get good at this after all!

A teenager was bowling down the lane. He's very good, but he bowls two-handed. Yep, he holds the ball with both hands during his approach, as if he's carrying a bag of rocks. I think cavemen would've bowled that way.

Speaking of, people use all five fingers to bowl" the thumb, middle and ring gingers go into the ball, while the index and pinky are there for stability and angle of holding. Knowing that, how in the hell was Fred Flintstone such a good bowler?