Livin' the Dream
By Jason Thomas
Last week in my PBA.com column, I wrote a recap of the telecast for the Ultimate Scoring Championship (which maybe should be renamed the Low to Mid-Scoring Championship after last Sunday's show). In case you missed the show or my recap, the event was touted by the PBA as the telecast that will finally illustrate just how well the pros would score if given the opportunity to bowl on a typical league shot. Then, the show aired and they averaged 224.5 for their six TV games...not bad, but not much better than what they averaged on the brutal Chameleon Championship condition the week prior. Why so low then? One word: carry.
On the show, the four finalists hit the pocket 54 out of 66 times. The players rolled a total of 40 strikes for the day, which works out to a 60% strike percentage and a 74% carry percentage (the number of strikes divided by the number of pocket hits). There was just one open frame for the day and, interestingly enough, the man who missed the pocket the most (Mike Wolfe, with four misses) had the day's highest average (241.5) and won the tournament.
So, let's take a moment and think about what makes an Ultimate Scoring condition so ultimately score-able. First, you have to have mistake area on the lane. That means when you miss right, you need the ball to hook back to the pocket and when you miss left, you need it to slide so that it doesn't hit too squarely on the headpin (if you're a lefty, simply reverse this...and stop kicking my butt in all the local tournaments!). A good bowler is always looking for mistake area on the lane because it gives him/her the ability to focus on maximizing carry, which is defined as the likelihood that a ball will strike when it hits the pocket.
Now, to have a truly ultimate scoring environment, you want to have the largest possible room for error on the lane, and a pocket that is as large as possible to produce the greatest probability of carrying a high percentage of strikes. But first, we have to define what the pocket is so we can understand what kind of hit should be carrying and what kind of hit is just a bad hit that will require us to make an adjustment. Most people define the pocket as the area between the 1 and 3-pins (the 1-2 on the left side), but I like to take the definition one step further. What I like to add to the definition is whether or not the headpin comes in contact with the 2-pin (3 pin for lefties) after it is hit. If it does, then it was a pocket hit. If it does not, then it was not. This definition excludes us from believing that a 2-pin leave was a pocket hit, and that a 4-pin leave (where the headpin hits the 2-pin thin and sends it around the 4-pin) is as high as you can go on the headpin and still be considered in the pocket. This works out to a width of about 2 inches on the lane (from the 16th board to the 18th board at the pins) or 10.5 inches on the pins (our 2-inch area plus the 8.5-inch diameter of the ball).
In an ultimate scoring environment, we have to assume that every possible inch in our "pocket zone" will give us a high probability of striking, or else we'll get run over by the bowlers who are carrying better than us (hence the term "carry contest" to describe a tournament where the pocket is so easy for everyone to find). So, how do we get good carry? Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to determine a simple answer to this question. Studies have been conducted by USBC, Kegel and numerous other bowling industry groups and individuals to determine the optimum "angle of entry" to maximize carry. And if you can tell me what your entry angle is (in degrees) on any given shot, then I'll be happy to give you my next born. How do the pros do it then? It's called trial and error.
What a good pro will typically do is find a line where he/she can consistently get to the pocket and have some margin of error. In an ultimate scoring environment, this is fairly easy to do. On a more difficult lane condition, some degree of poor carry is usually tolerable, since scores are likely to be higher the more often a person hits the pocket. On a difficult lane condition, a pro will usually be satisfied with 9 out of 10 pocket hits a game, even if only 5 or 6 of those hits are carrying, over 6 or 7 pocket hits a game with a much higher carry percentage. The reason? Because the 4 or 5 misses a game are much more likely to result in splits or difficult spares that lead to a score-killing open frame. But in an ultimate scoring environment you need both a high pocket percentage and good carry.
So in this environment, the pro will start off with a ball and a line that he/she is comfortable with and see what happens. Sometimes, the pro will get lucky and have a lot of mistake area and great carry right out of the gates. Sometimes, the carry will be so-so. Sometimes, it will be downright horrible. In certain cases an individual may even have trouble finding the pocket. The worst-case scenario (for me at least) is so-so carry. With so-so carry there is the illusion that things will get better and that you can hang in there with 230's. But nowadays, (and as I mentioned a few weeks back), the equipment is so good and the bowlers are so adept that anything less than a 260 average on an easy condition is likely to fall short of victory. Unlike the scenarios of not finding the pocket or having poor carry, which are no-brainer decisions (basically, you immediately try something different or perish), fixing your so-so carry is a tough decision to make.
For example, take my Tuesday night league. Going into last week, I was high average in the league with 218. But given the fact that I usually hit the pocket 28-30 times a week for my 3 games, I believe that this average is sub-par, which is supported by the fact that my high series in the league is 703 while numerous other bowlers with lower averages have rolled series of 750 or above. I have recently tried two adjustments to help improve my carry. One week, I used a less-hooking ball and played right of where I normally play. My carry got worse and I shot a 630 series. Last week, I decided to polish the ball I normally use to see if I could get a little more hook on the backend to increase my angle into the pins. This change caused me to lose the pocket altogether and I shot 564, my lowest set since the infamous week 1 debacle (which I wrote about in one of my first blogs here). Next week, I plan to try a more hooking ball to see how that works. If it doesn't then, well, I guess there's always therapy.
And that's basically it. It's like life. Try something and, if it doesn't work, try something else. Repeat. Repeat. Hopefully, after a while you find something that works. I believe that as long as the goal doesn't change (in this case the goal of scoring as high as possible) taking a side road isn't necessarily a bad thing...heck, it may even turn out to be a shortcut. If not, then there's always therapy. But in order to reach your full potential, you have to be willing to try something new. Sometimes you go backwards but, in the process, you learn something. As for the PBA's Ultimate Scoring Championship, I think it teaches us all a valuable lesson...that humility is the ultimate virtue in our complex and challenging sport.
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