Just how difficult is it to roll a near perfect game in bowling?

It isn't often that I get to witness this sort of thing unless I am watching the pros during a championship on TV. At our organization here in Vietnam we are nowhere near the skill level of the professionals even though we do get moments of brilliance from a couple of members every now and then and yesterday was one of those days.

Tuesday's are our group practice days where attendance is completely elective. Normally we will get 3-8 people that turn up and there is no competition. It is just a bunch of friends that are cheering one another on and hoping for everyone to do well. Sometimes pointers will be thrown out but for the most part it is just for fun. I go there in the hopes that I will somehow figure out this complicated game and get a grip on my ever-elusive consistency - which has been hiding from me lately for the past 3 weeks or so.

One of our guys, who has been the champion 3 times now and has also ever been dethroned by yours truly, started out his 1st and second game doing about as well as he always does with a 128 in this first game and a 151 in his second. These are not bad scores but for someone that plays as well as he normally does, this is nothing that makes him excited either.

But then, in game three something magical just happened and after he scored a Turkey in the first 3 frames (3 strikes in a row) we thought that would be the end of it but man oh man, he was just getting started.

getting 3 strikes in a row is quite the accomplishment in itself and is something even the best bowlers in the world, on the best possible surfaces in the world, using the world's best equipment, can rarely pull off. So for our buddy here to do it is quite the accomplishment. Not only did he get 3, he got 5 in a row and no, he wasn't done yet. He just kept lining up and having the pins fall and out of all of these shots they were all crackers of shots, except for one where he got a bit lucky in the way that the pins fell - the other ones hit exactly where you are meant to hit them using a 14 pound ball which is heavy enough to cause some serious pin action.

By the time he finally missed and didn't get a strike it was already the 9th frame and we were just standing back in amazement. In the history of DUMBO there have only been 2 instances of someone getting 5 strikes in a row and one of them was done by me 3 years ago. Nobody has ever gotten 6 let alone 8. Now unfortunately for this gentleman this amazing level of strikes in a row will not apply to the official records because the only games that count towards our league scores must take place on the official day of Thursday. That doesn't take away from how amazing this was.

So you can tell by the 2nd picture that a strike follow by 2 more strikes after it give you 30 points in one frame, which is the maximum amount of points that can possibly be accomplished in a single frame. It is only because of the two frames where he didn't strike that he didn't score the ultimate and perfect score of 300.

He ended with a score of 251, which is the highest score I've witnessed by anyone that was a friend of mine, in person. So yeah, it was a pretty special day. It was so impressive that I broke my "no dinking on Thursday" rule and went to go and celebrate this major achievement. I wish I could say that I bowled exceptionally well also but that was not the case: I managed to barely keep up with 120 points per game, with one of them slipping below that level at a 116. I am far from understanding what it takes to get my game where I want it to be.

The thing that gets me is how quickly a game headed towards a potential 300 can fall apart. A game that looks like it could be 300 is derailed and brought down quite a lot just by a couple frames of less-than-perfect performance. By simply not getting strikes in the last 3 frames, and the one open frame did the most damage, he managed to finish 49 points shy of a perfect game. It just goes to show how crazy difficult it is to bowl perfectly. We asked the staff if this was the highest score that anyone has ever gotten at the lanes here and they didn't know but think it might be.

One thing that irritated me is that during his near perfect game some people we do not know took up places right next to where he was bowling and didn't adhere to the "courtesy rule" which is where you do not bowl if someone on either lane next to you is in the ready position. On frame 9 where he got only 7 pins, one of the people on the adjacent lane ran up to throw while he was mid-swing. Now this could just be a coincidence but when you are "in the zone" the smallest thing, such as something suddenly appearing in your peripherals, can make you screw up your release. I'm not saying that this is definitely the culprit but it was the first time he failed to get a strike and those people weren't there prior to this.

So if you are ever at a bowling alley, please observe this very important rule. In the west, they will actually reprimand you or even kick you out if you violate this rule. Here in Vietnam, they let you do whatever you want.

It was a joy to witness a friend doing something like that and I hope this magic can return on Thursday when it actually counts towards the overall records in our league. At the moment the highest score that anyone has accomplished during league play is 234.

By the way, we can't show it because the system erases the scores after you bowl your last ball (no idea why it does that but it is a stupid feature) but our man got a strike on his last ball as well.