Hi Everyone,
I wanted to let people know about bowlersway.com. I've got some good standard advice for five pin bowling, that also works for ten pin in many respects.

Great community here, it's huge actually . I already like that my account had to be moderated before post...

Thank you,
Danny

Hello from a fellow Canadian! Though I don't bowl five-pin (I've tried, and can't help but overhook the ball. Think my high score is 186) and I doubt that you'll find many people to talk five-pin with (only know about a couple of other Canadians on this forum).

You're right about this being a large community. Hopefully there're still be plenty of things to discuss.

Great tips there. I'm sure some things like timing and position can be applied to ten-pin bowling as well.

Hey beefers

I actually come from a ten-pin background, but I really want to take advantage of the 5 pin lanes we have here. And I get a kick out of manual scoring. Speaking of manual scoring, it's interesting to see how it becomes a major part of the game. One thing I've noticed in the 3 weeks I've been there, each score card has its own style. One lady on my team writes the names for all 3 games in very nice cursive writing has quite a refined system for keeping Track of the game and score. I know it sounds crazy, but I really enjoy this part of the game. Everyone at the end gathers around with calculators and pencils to find out the winners, and the "no no no you added it wrong" can cause quite the stir... lol

That was the first problem I had, over hooking the ball. Very common from a ten-pin bowler bowling 5-pin. You would actually be surprised how many 5 pin bowlers would prefer to have slight hook on their ball, but have a difficult time with the release.

Common mistake, gripping the ball with your full hand - like palming a basketball. This can cause abnormal hook. You want to hold the ball with your fingers, leaving a pocket between the ball and the palm of your hand. Concentrate on rolling the ball of of your fingers.

See ya!

We have quite a few five-pin centers here in Vancouver as well, though most of them are tiny places within a larger building. And while new ten-pin centers are still opening up here, all the five-pin places are really old (except for a formerly Brunswick-operated center called The Zone which is quite new and has both five- and ten-pin.)

Wow, you still use manual scoring? Every bowling center I have ever been to has automatic scoring. Though I've heard of an old five-pin place that still has manual.

Good luck in your endeavors. Maybe you should try to introduce it yourself?

We have candlepin here in Canada, but only in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. And in many places there's only five-pin and no ten-pin (only the big cities have ten-pin).

There has been quite a few ten-pin center closures in the past decade (though they're mostly the very small, basement-type alleys), compared to only 3 new centers opened (which are all larger entertainment centers). Hopefully this trend reverses, since recreational bowling seems to be on a rise here (it's hard to get a lane at my center most nights, and on weekends there's often a 2-hour waiting list), with people of all ages participating. Oh well... whatever makes money for the centers so that they can at least stay open and we'll have a place to bowl....