Shocking result at last week's bowling outing in Da Nang, Vietnam

My fall from grace has been rather legendary and un-understandable by everyone involved. I am the only remaining member of the original three "founding fathers" of the league we have here in our aptly named DUMBO bowling organization and I have been bowling on and off basically all of my life. I would go to the lanes several times a week when I was in high school and the rest of my life, if there was a bowling alley there, I would go to it. This has proven difficult in South East Asia where bowling is significantly less popular than it is in the western world but if there was a bowling alley, I went to it. It is as simple as that.

There was a time when at least one of these awards was all but guaranteed to be in my possession at one point and they are the 2nd division championship (white belt) the "turkey" award for 3 strikes in a row (the chicken) and the top prize, which is the black belt and is the championship of everyone in the league.

A few years ago pre-Covid lockdowns I held the overall championship for nearly 10 weeks in a row defeating one person after the next. When people played against me there was a certain level of fear on their part. It wasn't a question of "if" i was going to win, it was a question of how badly I was going to beat them. Then one day a properly good bowler came into our midst and kind of ruined it for the rest of us. He was so much better than everyone else that he easily dispensed with me even though I was, at that time, demolishing everyone else in the men's division.

Then Covid happened and I don't know what happened to my ability during that nearly 1 year that the bowling alley was closed but i just lost my edge and I haven't been able to get it back ever since. The crazy thing is that I wasn't practicing back before Covid. I would only bowl on the tournament days and still quite easily defeated everyone. Now I practice normally one additional day per week to try to hone my skills but I just can't seem to recapture the glory that I had in that time.

Things have been a bit embarrassing lately to the point of where there are people that have never been bowling in their life and are doing as well as I do.

The fact that I was bowling on the same lane as 2 of the best players in our league at the moment at first made me excited because I am one of those people that thinks that greatness begets greatness and I thought I would ride that wave of excellence with them but man oh man did it not happen.

I adjusted my stance and grip multiple times, I tried every approach that I know and nothing worked. Frame number 8 was particularly bad with me guttering on the first ball and then managing to knock down only 2 pins on the 2nd ball. SIDE NOTE: Knocking down ONLY 2 pins on a full rack is considered to be one of the most difficult things to do in bowling. Because of physics, if you hit anywhere you are very likely to get either 1 pin (on the 7 or 10 pins, individually) or you are going to get 3 or more. Getting only 2 pins is extremely difficult to pull off and this is why the most difficult score to get in bowling is not 300 points (a perfect game) but a 294 where you got strikes 12 times in a row and then only got 2 pins on the last ball.

Needless to say I was not intentionally trying to get only 2 pins. I am not that good.

That pathetic score of 72 is extremely bad. A year ago i was around a 150 average bowler and I have seen that drop ever since despite the fact that I am practicing on a regular basis.

Now my 2nd game was much better where I got more than twice as many points as the first game with a 145 but this doesn't detract from the "what the fuck is going on?" aspect of my bowling game as of late. I put on a happy face and act like it doesn't bother me that I am doing terribly but that is a lie, it does bother me and I'm at the point now where I don't really see anything that I can possibly do to improve.

By luck of the draw I ended up being the person that is going to be bowling for the promotion from 2nd division ranking to premiere league ranking in a showdown tomorrow against someone that on paper, I should absolutely thrash. I am a bit shaken now and feel like anything could happen. It likely wouldn't surprise me if I were to lose and if that happens, I will not complain. I just can't seem to get my shit together and try as I may, I cannot remember what it is that made me a good bowler several years ago.

It's embarrassing I suppose because out of the 20 or so regulars that come to our events, I am the MOST experienced as far as bowling is concerned. I have been doing it my entire life yet once we start rolling, it often seems like I have never done this before and the spin that I have on my ball is not helping me at all.

We have a bowling group where I occasionally post something funny that I see that is bowling related and recently I discovered this gem

I post memes frequently as it is the only real social media that I have in my life and this is from a real business in Chicago. I can only imagine what the rest of the comments looked like for this particular Tweet.

So today I am going to take a day off the booze and see if that has any impact on my abilities at the bowling alley tomorrow. I can't imagine that it is going to because hell, I've tried almost everything else. The only thing I haven't yet tried is to be drunk while I am bowling and while I would hate for that to be the secret I do recall in the past that I would have a few beers while I was bowling. It just seems a bit self-destructive to crack open a beer before noon. That's some alcoholic actions right there.

Anyway, it all kicks of at 11am tomorrow at the lanes in Da Nang, Vietnam. If by some chance you happen to be in this part of the world and want to see a bowling veteran potentially get absolutely embarrassed in a sport that he used to be good at, come to the top floor of Lotte Mart and take part in the action.