Not having practiced on Monday and having had the oil bled out of my ball the day before, I wanted to get a couple of games of warm-ups in before league bowling tonight, so I joined Ralph on his pair. The second game of my warm-up session actually turned out to be the high point of the night, as I had a clean game in the 230s, but, as you’ll see, I wished I had another game like that in me tonight.
The first game saw me getting lined up on lane 45, but not on 46, as I alternated strikes with opens on 46, including a 5-7 split in the 4th frame that I narrowly missed converting. After a spare and a couple of single-pin misses, I finally found the groove, standing outside where I normally do on the approach, and I had 5 in a row to finish for a 183. The strike string proved to be critical, as we closed about a 40 pin late deficit in the final frames, with Ralph going on a similar strike spree for a game in the 230s, and he had to go strike for strike with Team 9’s anchor, who wound up missing in his 12th frame, giving us a 9 pin first game win.
I was clean with a double in the 5th and 6th, making 5 single-pin spares until the 9th frame, when I threw an attempt at the 6 pin in the gutter. A strike in the 10th gave me hope for a game over 200, but I missed a 7 pin on the fill for a 194. Brian led the way in this game with a 234, and we won the second game by a more comfortable margin.
I made a 7 pin to begin the third game, then doubled before missing a 10 pin, again in the channel. My strike shots in the next 2 frames were through the nose, leaving the “Big 4” (4-6-7-10) and the 4-6. My shot in the 7th frame was also high, but I left a more manageable 3-6-10, which I made. A double in the 8th and 9th got me back on track, but I left a ringing 10 in the 10th frame. I made that, then left the 6-10 in the fill for a 181. There was no big charge for us late in the game, but it was still close, as Team 9’s anchor could’ve struck out to make things interesting for total. He didn’t quite do it, but his team still took the third game.
Bowling the tournament earlier in the week might have caught up to me, as my left foot was kind of bothering me near the end, but the thing I’ll take out of this night was that, even though I missed a couple of 10s on the night, I made 4 other 10s, so I’m making progress on making that corner pin more consistently.
Result: 183-194-181=558
Average (36 games): 197 Last 9 average: 210
Next week’s AVG+1: 622
I had hoped to be able to tell everyone who our opponent in next week’s position round will be tonight, but Donna was still sorting that out when Brian and I had to leave, so the usual Friday standings update will have that information.
Donna also said it looks like the teams that have been submitted for the Wednesday night Westgate Mixed League look full, but she would know more about any new sign-ups before the league meeting in two weeks.
The Tenth Board 