A Process for Competition Readiness

When setting goals and making training plans, it is important to know where your bowling game is at the start. For me, the opportunity to bowl in the recent PWBA Kickoff Classic series provided an excellent opportunity to compete and it left me with a starting point in my preparation for the rest of the PWBA season.

Overall, the event went well—not quite as well as I would have liked (my goal was to win a title), but finishing in fifth place in the Bowlers Journal Classic was close. This was the first event in the series, and I felt that it was more suited to my game and I was throwing it as well as I ever have.

As the week progressed, I started throwing the ball harder and spinning it more, which leads to less hook for my game. Intuitively, it seems as though if you turn your hand more (spin the ball), it would translate into more hook. In fact, the opposite is true for me, particularly on flatter patterns. The more I spin it, the less it reads the front part of the lane, which translates to less hook overall. The longer I stay behind the ball, the better it reads the front part of the lane and hooks more at the breakpoint, allowing the ball to be more predictable and do what it was designed to do.

On a positive note, my spare conversion percentage was very close to where I was aiming, and my strike percentage was also pretty good. With all of this in mind, I have a few takeaways for my preparation for the next swing of the tour.

Making a plan

When I am setting goals for anything in my life, I always try to start with the end in mind. At the time of writing this article, I am eight weeks out from the start of the spring PWBA Tour swing, which starts on April 23, 2021 with the ...