As I usually do at the end of my winter bowling season, I dedicate a post to breaking down my league performance with the help of the BowlSK reports. First, the first-ball numbers (numbers before the pipe | character reflect last year’s performance):
Strike percentage: 46.4% | 36.4%
Pocket shots: 78.2% | 64.0%
Carry percentage: 58.6% (529/903) | 53.7% (392/730)
Double rate: 49.1% (250/509) | 37.2% (149/400)
Average first-ball count: 8.9 | 8.7
Average first-ball non-strike count: 7.9 | 7.9
As has been noted in many of the league night recaps, I had more of a struggle with my shotmaking this year, which is reflected in a noticeably lower overall strike percentage as well as the percentage of my pocket shots. The thing that helped is that my carry rate was only slightly lower, but I couldn’t really string them, which is reflected in my double rate. My spares continued to be fairly manageable, as my average non-strike count remained the same.
Now, breaking down my spare game:
Overall spare percentage: 51.4% (303/589) | 55.9% (384/687)
Single-pin spare percentage: 70.9% (183/258) | 68.7% (184/268)
Multi-pin spare percentage: 56.1% (110/196) | 60.9% (179/294)
Makeable (non-split) percentage: 64.5% (293/454) | 64.6% (363/562)
Split conversion percentage: 7.4% (10/135) | 16.8% (21/125)
Washout conversion percentage: 26.1% (6/23) | 16.7% (5/30)
Percentage on single 10 pin: 63.6% (68/107) | 53.3% (49/92)
Percentage on single 7 pin: 71.4% (20/28) | 56.3% (27/48)
Overall, I did show a bit of improvement in my spare shooting, but most of that was improvement in making my multi-pin spares (including splits). My single-pin percentage went down slightly, and most of that was not picking up my corner pins; I wasn’t leaving as many 10s, but I left a lot more 7s (20) while only making 7 more of those. What may help is work not only on picking up the corner pin spares, but trying to learn to adjust so I don’t leave as many of them (I think the increased 7 pin leaves were ones where I left shakers coming in light).
To test my overall split improvement, I ran both this year’s and last year’s spare percentage reports and looked for my 3-10, which is one of the easier splits. I found I actually made it one fewer time, but left it two fewer times, so my percentage remained the same (50%), so I shouldn’t count on making splits at this rate, as the improvement was probably picking up one or two of my tougher ones (indeed, I picked up both the 2-4-8-10 and the 4-7-10 for the first time in my recollection this season).
The Tenth Board 