Troubleshooting Your Bowling Game – Part 1

One of the most common issues I hear about when speaking with bowlers is knowing what to do when something feels “off” in their game during league play or tournament competition. The challenge here is that you don’t always have a coach with you to pinpoint what’s going on, and you can’t really stop and do a bunch of drills to correct the flaw during competition—assuming you can even pinpoint what the flaw is to begin with.

This month, we’ll start to look at some common issues that can seemingly appear out of nowhere, some potential causes of them, and what you can do about them so your league night or tournament isn’t ruined. Please note that “troubleshooting” in this case refers to quickly identifying something that is abnormal to your game, and it doesn’t refer to making a long-term change. For example, someone who usually has very good balance and is struggling with it one night will troubleshoot the problem. On the other hand, someone who rarely posts a shot at the foul line will likely need some more in-depth correctives and lessons with a qualified coach.

One of the most panic-inducing issues for players of any competitive level is warming up and realizing that, for some reason, they are not able to consistently hit their mark. If you are normally pretty accurate, this kind of problem can be unnerving. As far as troubleshooting goes, it is relatively common for something to be off that is causing you to miss predominantly one way or the other. There’s also the possibility that you are missing randomly on both sides, which is usually a completely different issue. Let’s look at each of these scenarios in detail below.

Missing the target to the inside

Consistently missing your target inside (when that’s not usually a problem for you) is almost always related to your bowling shoulder pulling forward from the top of the swing, which can be caused by a few different issues. All of these issues relate to late timing, and it is likely such a subtle difference ...