After this past weekend, I can say with certainty that I am a house shot bowler and am lost on sport patterns. Saturday I bowled a tournament on Kegel Alcatraz and barely broke 501 for 3 games. Obviously I didn't make the cut with that sorry score.

The next day, I shot a 627 in league without trying very hard. I even purposely used balls that were wrong for the conditions to make it harder to score.

The only way I can get better is with practice but there aren't any houses that lay down sport patterns.

I've been averaging over 200 for decades, but in 'reality', I'm a lifetime 187. That's the difference between a sport-shot and a THS.

Sport patterns force bowlers to do something THS's don't. i.e. Shoot spares. THS's have ruined bowling. We all get to run around with inflated egos and few skills. We buy our averages.

A couple of weeks ago, the PBA put on a show where players had to shoot on lanes where the pattern was applied with a bug-sprayer. It seemed to me the older players like Pete Webber did okay. They had some experience. But younger players with too many RPM's and too much speed struggled.

Sport shots are similar. Here's my 2 cents and 2 hints. 1) To strike you must be on the 17-1/2 board when you get to the pocket. 2) Your ball must be rolling.

Avoid extreme angles and pick up your spares. Out-grind your opppnents.

My spare shooting is terrible on sport patterns. The angles I'm accustom to using on house shot doesn't work on patterns. I know I have to tighten up and throw straight at them rather than hook the ball over to them. However, then muscle memory takes over and throws them wide.

I was using a fairly tight line, standing 20 and playing a shallow angle off the the 10 board. Unfortunately, although the ball was hitting the pocket, carry was inconsistent. Little adjustments resulted in either the ball not recovering from the right or going high/brooklyn.

My mindset was, I'm around the pocket, let's see if we can't make this line work. Nope, splits and washes didn't help my case and missing a bunch of easy spares was just plain silly on my part.

I thought about moving left and try swinging the ball out for more angle but never pulled the trigger.

This weekend I'll be bowling another tournament that's going to be on a pattern. I'm thinking about using a urethane ball and play down and in up the 10 board. My goal this weekend is to just stay around the pocket and focus on spares. If I get a few strikes, that's OK too.

I also hook into spares, but not from necessity but for convenience :-) THS's allow us to. Sport patterns, not so much. Get a spare ball that won't hook. Then polish it :-) Next, you need to learn to throw straight. There's a youtube channel called 'Art of Bowling'. It suggests you stand 16 and learn to throw straight down the 10 board. Once you can do this, try using the 23-board on the lanes for every spare. You'll need to adjust your feet 6 boards on the approach left or right as needed. As you get better, you can adjust your feet or target, but the best way is to use the same target as often as possible. In my experience, except for the 4-7-10 or 6-7-10, there are only 6 lines that can pick up all spares. I'm overweight, so I use 10 boards :-)

We are bowling on Kegal U.S. Open #2 pattern tomorrow. It looks like a long and flat pattern.

https://patternlibrary.kegel.net/Pattern/29b06e51-db7e-ec11-8d21-0022480a1ca2

It's actually not flat, I read it wrong. It's 41 feet and has a decent volume staggered across. Using the 31 rule, I estimated the break point be about 10 board and for the most part, it was.

Either I was very unlucky or line I was playing was wrong. I stood about 15 and targeted 10 straight up. The break was strong and I was able to hit the pocket flush regularly. Carry was terrible, at one point I left back-to-back solid nines.

At the end of the day, my spare shooting failed me again.