Nice point. This is my first year bowling seriously and my average is mid 140's. The problem is with my fairly rapid progression I'm shooting mainly 170-190. This is a good advantage for my league team, but the unfairness came in tournaments last week. I cleaned house with my huge handicap, and it was unfair. I ended up splitting bracket profits with the 2nd place guy to clear my mind a bit. Even if I'm the beneficiary, I don't feel good about this kind of advantage, it's just not right.
Enjoy it while you can because soon you will be on the other end of things. No need to be apologetic - it's called "the natural progression of life." I'm sure at some point in time that other bowler was cleaning house when he was improving. I did my housecleaning in junior bowling travel league when I went from a conventional grip plastic ball (with my 126 average with 36 games just before Christmas) to my fingertip LT-48 and finished the season with a 161 average for 84 games (my average over the last 48 games was about 187) and shot about 5 600 series in the last 16 weeks. And because of my improvement my team won the travel league championship which, in our area, was a big
deal because there were 20 teams representing 7 different bowling centers.
But it's your conscience, man, and it's not for me to say whether you did the right or wrong thing. I'm just telling you that I would've kept the spoils because you earned it by getting better - it wasn't "dumb luck" or anything like that.