That’s the advice that my YABA bowling coach used to give us. Every time someone asks me for bowling adivce, I retell the story about the old man who told me this a thousand times (as if I forgot from week to week) and we laugh. I generally don’t like it when people ask me for advice on bowling. This usually happens when I’m out with a large group of people from some drunkbowling action. I think Jim put it best when he said “well, the advice I would give you isn’t going to improve your game today. In fact, it will probably make it worse. Let’s start with your two step approach….” Unfortunately neither of us has ever had the nerve to say that to anyone who asked for advice.

Kat and I went bowling on Monday at the old Showplace Lanes, which I’m really starting to like even though the price per game can be outrageous ($4.50/game???) during peak hours. I, once again had a mediocre showing: 177, 165, 180. That brings my running average up to 170.1. Once again, I did some terrible spare shooting. I had at least three open frames per game and only in the 177 game did I even mark in the tenth frame. Terrible. The 180 hurt even worse. I want to say it was 7 strikes for a 180. That’s some shitty spare shooting. And it wasn’t like I left anything terrible. I think one time I hit the nose to leave a 3-6-7-10, but that’s about it.

There were two interesting things that happened though. One, which is annoying and happens fairly often when I go bowling, is that they always give us a lane next to the only other people in the bowling alley. I think they do this to try to make their lives easier, but at least give me one fucking lane of separation! I severly dislike bowling next to people with no sense of lane courtesy. And it’s even worse when they are experienced bowlers. They should fucking know better! Second, is the clowns next to us were getting a bowling lesson or something. So there was some old guy trying to help them with their game. I’m really hoping they weren’t paying the guy because they sure as hell weren’t using his advice. Every time he walked away one of them was arguing that this coach’s suggestion that he should control his ball speed better was cahra-Z. Even I know that controlling ball speed is important and I’m not trying to pick up any ladies with my bowling skilz (or bowstaff skilz, or computer hacking skilz for that matter). At a crutial unfortunate point, this coach decided to come over and give me some advice on my game. I don’t handle bowling advice well from strangers. He was standing right at the end of the approach while I took my nineth frame madness shot and sure enough I totally threw a shitty ball and ended up opening in the nineth, causing me to go from a potential 200+ game to a sub-190 game if I struck out. Terrible. On the plus side, he did share with me a bit of fortune cookie wisdom (”Ya strike for show, spare for the dough”) and his help was actually useful to kat’s game.

But this brings up another point. I’ve always been the kind of guy that just played everything by feel. It’s just worked out better for me that way. I can’t tell you how I shoot pool, I just worked on consistantly moving the pool cue and then adjusted where I was aiming according to what I hit. The same thing goes for bowling. I can’t bring myself to use the fucking arrows. Every time I try to concentrate on hitting a particular board/arrow I either throw it in the ditch or tug it and catch the seven pin. It’s terrible. In both activities, I know it’s going to keep me from ever being great. I’ll continually be alright, occasionally having a great night and other times having an atrocious night.