Tonight was one of those nights that had promise. I started good in practice. Everything felt good. The first game I bowl a 188, which should have been more. I started with an open on a 4 pin, then ran off a 4 bagger, which I wasn't crazy about a couple of them because the line the ball went on wasn't what I wanted, but it ran right with the oil line I guess to hold pocket. I then started doing something different leaving the 6-7 split of which I got neither trying to go for it and missed a good bit right of the 6, then I leave the Greek Church and going for the 6-9-10 again go right and only pick off the 10. I start to get it back some but miss spares I should be covering like a 4-8 or something like that. The next game I start out with the front 6, lose my balance on the seventh frame which killed some of my leverage and left the 2-5 from going light. I then stop at least a foot short on the spare and chop the 2 since the ball had too much time to react. I strike on the next frame and then the next time back on the lane I lost my balance, which was the right lane and run in high and leave the 9 pin which I covered. I strike out in the tenth, but I don't believe any of the shots were good. My armswing felt completely off on all of them. The first one felt like it went way out from my body by ran the line I wanted it to. The second one I thought was in the gutter as I missed right of target, I started turning early but somehow it stayed on the lane, hit the 1-3 and with some pin action knocked all 10 down. The third one was in the pocket, but I had missed left but it stayed in the oil to put them all in the pit. I finished out with a 246. After two games I was sitting at 434, thinking a 600 shouldn't be a problem, but there was something wrong with my swing and release. My swing was off, my release was off, mainly early turning and timing. I had 4 opens in the first 5 frames. I then started making marks for the most part but still had issues with my swing. I miss my target and my wrist breaks back on me and while I get it to the pocket its weak and I leave the 5-7 to being the tenth frame. I figure its probably an open and decided to just amp the speed up and hit the five as hard as I can and hopefully on the right side to kick it over. I get the scorer showing a speed of 21.6 mph, hit the 5 just right of center bounce it off of the back and it bounces forward taking out the 7, the one good thing from that game. The game was well out of reach at that point so I grab my ball for the fill shot and just threw it straight and hard to finish the night and only beat one bowler on the pair that game while holding the third highest average. I finish with a 579 beating only the two low average bowlers on my team in total and a pre bowl from the other team when I was only 8 pins behind the guy with high set on the pair after the first two games who ended up beating me by 107 pins on total. We lost all 4 points. We were also without our anchor and I forgot to try to get a sub for him since I knew he wasn't going to be there last week.

On another note I went and got the Lane 1 Liberator today. After throwing a couple of practice shots with it tonight, I'm not sure how well its going to work. Its pretty strong. I might have to do some surface adjustments. Its 1000 dull, maybe take it up to 2000 then 4000 then polish after trying it at the Tuesday house.

Last night, I made a comeback on 3rd games from the weak games.

119-129-209

1st:- 119

It ugly game with 4 6 pins and 2 gutters. I could fix my release.

2nd:- 129

Worst game that I have had 4 splits (2-7 pins) and one made.

3rd:- 209

Woah! I made comeback with 3 strikes, 2 spares, and 2 strikes. I was attmpet to broke my highest game record of 222 (12/06), but I failed in 10 frame when I bowled with weak release then 7 pins and missed spare. Almost clean game in 3rd. I was choked after miss the hambone from 3 strikes.

Total:- 457

My teammate whom he bowled 279 in 2nd games and he was choked in 10 frame with leave 5 pin. He should bowl 300.

The other team whom he bowled 278 in 1st and 279 in 2nd. He was choked for no 300 twice. Meanwhile in the 1st game of 8 frame, He threw very fast then the ball crashed the black wall for strike. The black wall fall down and 5 minutes delay. Possible 30 or 35+ mph.

I have never seen it before when the ball slam too hard to the black wall to fall down.

I was happy with my scores last night, though I missed some very easy spares.

I rolled a 183-201-199 for a 583 series, and a 194 average. Team took 5 out of 7, and we stay in first place for the second half so far.

Way to go with the 600 series Brandon and Mike - that is great.

Congrats on your 200 Paul - keep up the good work.

Saab - awesome consistency, keep it up. :-)

My Saturday did not go as well as I had hoped. I got my average the 1st 2 games but failed in the 3rd - apparantly I was having too much fun and not keeping my head in the game ;-). Oh well, that's ok - Saturday is my non-serious sanction league, guess I need to let loose now and again. I don't even remember what my 3rd game was but I know it was bad. I had 1 frame that I threw 2 gutters. LOL!!! - I wanted to crawl under a rock.

Looking forward to Thursday :-)

Happy Bowling!!!!

Thanks for the support. You mentioned gutter balls....the fact that I was throwing WAY too many of those buggers is why I focused on changing my grip and release. And the nice side effect of this is that I can stay with the Vapor Zone all night long, so I don't have to worry about different break points and angles.

Friday night I missed three 7 pins, which are usually lock for me to pick. If I had picked those, I would've had an easy 600 series.

Tonight was a night I wish I could forget. Things would start out good both of the first two games. The first one I ended up with a 180, 4 pins under average, having opens on a couple of 4 pins, one missed left, one missed right, a ten pin, I had a little shoe issue that caused me to lose my balance that I missed left due to it and chopped the 3 from the 3-6. The next frame I start out looking like a dutch 200, striking on the left and sparing on the right, once a full rack spare from a gutterball. I had one open that game, a 4 pin wide right again. I finally carry on the right lane and don't carry on the left. again. I finish with a 196. The last game I had 4 taps even with a ball change from the Fury to the Purple Ogre in the first 5 frames, one 10 pin and 3 four pins, all opens with a strike in the second frame. I then begin to mark but can't strike. I leave a 4 pin in the ninth and low and behold I miss it. I could make the 7 pin which the ball went right through the 4 pin spot, but when I had the 4 I couldn't do it. I double in the tenth and get a nine count on a pulled ball for a 148 to shot a 524 on the night. The team has a whole just didn't do well other than the lead off bowler who broke 600, the next two highest sets for our team was 533 by two guys, the anchor with an average in the 210s and my brother who has been asked to come in to bowl for his hurt father-in-law and hasn't bowled since last season ended in May and then my 524. The anchor just was constantly getting 9 counts, with a few strikes and some 7 and 8 counts. The other team was shooting almost all 200s breaking above 1100 for 5 men almost every game scratch, while we were lucky to get into the 900s with over 100 pins of handicap. I don't plan on being this bad next week. I was 0 for 6 on 4 pins, 1 for 3 on 10 pins but 2 for 2 on 7s. I was in the pocket most of the time other than about 5 shots that were pulled or I hit the dry too soon and it took off. I just couldn't convert the leaves, all makable with no splits.

Well a terrible night for me on Saturday... Started off ok in the 1st game, but splits would keep me down to a 170. 2nd game, my spare game fell apart, and I couldn't find a line to save my life, 139. Threw what looked to be my best shot of the night in the 2nd game only to leave a pocket 7-10 split. Along with 3 or 4 other splits that game. 3rd game got even worse as I couldn't convert my spares nor find any sort of line, finished with a 112. 421 series, one of my worst this season. I also didn't close out a single 10th frame. Very disappointed with my night, and I just couldn't get my mind on Track. Continued to think way too much instead of going up and bowling. Which led to disaster as we lost 3 out of 4 with mainly me to blame. Everyone else on my team bowled at or above average, and I was just sinking...

One thing to add, I wasn't the only one having problems. Some other teams were dealing with the same issues. It seemed like the first 5 sets were all having problems with splits...

Tonight I turned in another stellar performance, and by stellar I mean my team would have been better off without me there, but even had I hit average every game we might not have won any points. It wasn't just me though as we had only 3 out of 12 games that someone on our team hit average, one each for the other three guys and each in a different game. In practice I felt good, I had a choice of 3 different balls to use and was releasing the ball good. Then the scoring started and it all went downhill. Something was wrong in my strike ball release, I believe I started turning the ball early, or I just got lazy. My thumb also started hurting, I'm not sure if it was from squeezing or needing to adjust tape in the balls that has it. I think I have some tape set too close to the side of the thumb and not enough at the back or front of it. Maybe I'll adjust some of them tomorrow. I finally adjusted it on the Liberator and made sure I wasn't squeezing and it stopped hurting. Either way I didn't realize it until it was too late, and even then had a hard time correcting it. I did start to at least adjust to hit to try to get good hits in the pocket, but then I would miss spares, all of them that should have been converted, besides the 7-10 that was almost a 5-7-10 and the 4-6, and a washout since I made the other I left. I went from my Jazz to Groove to my Liberator, which is when I noticed the lower Track and thought something was off in my release. I bowled games of 158, 136 and 155 for a 449, which none of the games was the low game on the team, but combine was the low set. I'm hoping that its mainly from the amount of bowling I've done over the last few weeks outside of the 9 league games a week. I think I'm not going to bowl until league on Saturday and hope to get things turned around. This is 3 times in the last 4 days that my teams have had their rearends handed to them. On top of bad bowling the other teams post good scores.

Had a pretty decent night tonight, the lanes were GONE by the time our league started.

Anything inside 10 was not gonna hold.

I managed to shoot 215-180-232-203 with my Pyro.

Missed too many 10 pins on the night, so I'm a bit upset with that, but for the most part I bowled well and we took 3 games and total pins, so we should be in 2nd/3rd place next week.