How to screw up a near-guaranteed 200+ game in 10-pin bowling
200 games are very rare for amateurs like me and my friends. In 2024 we have only seen a handful and we are nearly 75% of the way through the year. I'm not just talking about on league days, I'm talking on any days at all including regular practice days. I went on a practice day today and did pretty well in all 3 games that I played but there was one game where I was absolutely on fire.
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Now I am going to preface this by saying that the bowling alley was an absolute madhouse today. It is the 2nd day of a public holiday and I was concerned that it was going to be exactly like it is. Since none of the kids are in school and most adults are not at work, mommy and daddy have to find something for the kiddos to do and for a lot of people, that choice is the top floor of the shopping mall where there are 2 kid playgrounds a, cinema, and multiple arcades. There is also a bowling alley up there but kids tend to be quite crap at bowling so not many of them were actually playing. However, they do create a ton of distractions and will actually wander up onto the lanes with zero regard to any sort of courtesy.
It doesn't seem that bad from the picture but I didn't want people to think I was perving on their kids so I didn't actually want to get a bunch of people in the photo but you can tell that this area isn't exactly designed with adults in mind and there were hundreds of kids in there, some of which would just come and sit in our seats and wander onto the bowling area until staff or parents came and pulled them back. Things like this make me wonder if I was just as oblivious to my surroundings when I was a kid because it seems like these youngsters just walk forward until they run into something like they are a Roomba or something.
So it was extra difficult for me to concentrate this time around but somehow I managed it. In game one I pulled down a 158, which is pretty good by my standards and about 28 pins above my league average. However, it was in game two where I really shined.
They say that "greatness begets greatness" and the fact that my lane partner was bowling above his own average helped as we seemed to just bounce excellence off of one another throughout the game. It was frame 3 where things really took off for me as it is very rare for me to bowl 3 strikes in a row, let alone 4. It was nearly 6 in a row because that 9 followed by a miss was actually a better head-pin contact roll than some of the others were but sometimes you are just unlucky when it comes to how the pins fall.
Having a 174 by frame 8 is almost a guaranteed 200+ game especially when up until that point, I was bowling about as well as I ever do but here is how you screw up this near sure thing: You get a wicked split in the 9th for starters and this was a very tough one with a very low conversion rate
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It is called a 4/7/9 split and it is extremely unlikely that you will ever end up with these 3 pins standing and only these pins standing. The only way you can convert this is to brush the two pins on the left hand side and make the front pin crash across the lane on a wing and a prayer and hope it hits the 9, which is 12 inches closer to the other 2 pins than the 10 would be - which is a slightly "easier" split to pick up but still nigh on impossible for me. I ended up getting close, but in the end only got 2 of them down. So this got me to 183 but seeing as how my game was going I still had a very good chance to surpass 200 but then something that is easier for others but really tough for me happened in the 10th frame.
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I call them "two-fers" but they are known as "double wood" and a variety of other nicknames. Basically you have 2 pins one after the other but they are around 22 inches apart. Since I bowl with a curve and am relatively incapable of NOT bowling with a curve i have to do something truly magical to get both of these. Either I have to miraculously hit the 3 pin on it's right-to-left so that it hits it just on the front and knocks it back somehow or I have to clip the head pin on the right and have enough spin on it to keep the spin going and hit the one behind it. The latter approach is what the pros use more frequently but I am not a pro, I am nowhere near as good as a pro and 90% of the time I am going to miss this shot. I missed this shot and ended up with an open frame in the 10th and a final score of 192.
Now don't get me wrong, this is a VERY good score for an amateur but for the most part I would rather be well away from getting 200 than be so close only to flub it up in the last two, very unlucky frames. I don't know why my luck turned so bad at the end of the game but that is exactly what happened.
Oh well, at least it wasn't on a league day where there was a ton of observers.
You are not wrong. People in general don't have any situational awareness these days. That's part of the reason my wife and I started having our groceries delivered to he house. Walking around the grocery store and expecting anyone to be paying attention to what they are doing is a lesson in futility. That last pin spread you got is no joke. It's pretty easy to hit the front, but you just never know where it is going to bounce. Add in your curve and it is even harder.
I wonder how much smartphones have to do with this? A bunch of zombified people just wandering around until something hits them then they start to record it so maybe they can go viral over the upcoming confrontation.
I don't know if that is even it. It probably has a bit to do with it, but people just seem self absorbed. Even if they aren't on a device. Personally, I think it goes along with the general lack of empathy that the world seems to have these days. People tend to forget that we share this world with other people with the same struggles and emotions as us.
this is a good way of looking at it. I experience this over here a lot. Sometimes I leave the house with a smile on my face and will say hello to everyone I encounter only to have their reaction be one of disdain like I am some sort of creep on the prowl when all I am really trying to do is be nice. We need more people to just be nice and like you say, empathetic.
My wife is really good at that. When we go out for walks she is saying good morning to everyone and I'm next to her thinking "stranger danger!".
here there is always the question of whether or not they even speak english but they know "hello" at least but the looks you get back from people when they go through that awkward moment of whether or not they are going to say anything at all is kind of funny and strange as well.
To be honest it does look like a kiddies play area more than a bowling alley. Today parenting is very lax and instead of watching their monsters they are oblivious to the stuff happening around them. Other people are more worried about their kids ad it is no wonder kids vanish. I was at a restaurant in England and at the front of the menu they had a notice. It stated children were welcome if they were well behaved and did not make a noise as it was not the job of the staff to tell the parents to control their kids as that would be embarrassing. One warning and afterwards you will be asked to leave the premises. I was quite impressed because most places just put up with poor parenting as you cannot blame the kid.
I like that sort of restaurant policy. There was a place that made the news somewhere in USA where after repeated problems with unruly kids the owner decided to ban all children under the age of something like 10. Then there were some people who tried to sue him to force him to allow kids in his place. I don't know who won in that situation but I hope it was the restaurant owner. For me, I would be more likely to go to a place like this because while I have nothing against kids the parents who just let them run wild are why some places can't have nice things anymore.
Kids will always be kids and it would be suprising that you did more when you were a kid😃
I went to the mall one festive period and I saw some kids playing football in the mall, I was stunned.
kids are going to do whatever they think they can get away with. On one hand I admire their bravery and how they can turn almost any situation into fun but at the same time I don't think they realize how annoying they are to other people that don't want their area to turn into a playground.