The last few weeks have been crazy in the Premiere League of our bowling league here in Da Nang, Vietnam. The week that I was relegated, which was a couple weeks ago, I actually bowled quite well but everyone else in the Premiere league bowled really well also. I had the lowest score of all eligible people at 147 and honestly, if most of you were to go to the lanes right now and bowl 10 games in a row, you would not get 147 points. It's a pretty damn good score.
This past week is the 2nd week that I have not been in the Premiere league and I found myself in a position to bowl for the promotion against a guy that has also in the past been in the Premiere league but was relegated by having the lowest score out of the group in one particular week. he is no pushover, but the odds, if we were to have them, were in my favor as far as the crowd is concerned.
We had a pretty fantastic turnout of near 30 people and occupied all of the available lanes other than lane 1, which in this and likely most other lanes in the world, is consistently broken. No lanes in the world pay much attention to lane 1 for some reason, I suspect because it is always up against a wall.
My first game is always normally not the best, because it takes me a frame or two in order to "feel out" the lane since I bowl with a curve. how my curve is going to behave depends a LOT on whether or not they oiled the lane properly and more often than not, they have NOT done so correctly. This kind of sucks but in a bowling alley that costs $4 for two hours of play, I'm not going to complain or demand excellence.
I started out poorly and my opponent did well but ended poorly
144 to 120
Was the result of game one, putting my opponent a comfortable 24 points ahead of me going into game two. It only takes 1 frame of good result from one person and missing on the part of the other person to totally turn things around, so this was a manageable deficit in my mind. Round 2 we both played like jerks and didn't look lie either of us belonged in any sort of competition
107 -100
Those are embarrassing scores for people that play every week. I was ashamed, he was ashamed. We should be too. However, this put him an additional 7 points ahead of me.
The last game I finally kind of found my legs and he returned to form a bit as well. I was a spare machine in game 3 but just couldn't quite find the strike zone despite almost always hitting the sweet spot. When this happens all you can do is complain because there really isn't much reason for it to be like that.
124 - 154
That was the final score of game 3 and at this point neither one of us could remember the scores we had gotten in the previous games so neither of us actually knew which one of us had won. If you were keeping score though, and as we would find out an hour or so later at the after party, the final score was....
375 - 374
A match this close has never happened before in singles play. We have had them closer than this in doubles, ties actually and when this happens we have to do a bowl-off which is just a frame by frame competition to see who wins. If one team gets a 9 and the other gets a 7 in the first frame, the game is over with the 9 getting the win.
Having lost by a single pin makes me think about all the times that I barely missed a pin or got 2 of the remaining ones, but not the 3rd. In one situation that really sticks out to me.
After i bowled my first ball I had a 1 3 6 8 remains. Because the 8 pin is actually nearly 3 feet behind the other pins, you can't just hit the 1/3 pocket, they will miss knocking down the 8 unless you get seriously lucky by some pin action bounding off the wall. The only real way to get this spare pickup is to hit the 1 on the left side and have the ball carry on to knock down the 8 on it's own. The trajectory of the 1 pin will hit the 3 and 6 clearing the lane.
Well on my attempt i managed to get the 8 pin but overshot the 1 missing it altogether so not only did i not get the spare, but i missed out on knocking down 3 pins that are actually pretty easy to hit: Basically you just hit he 1 almost anywhere and it is going to get the other ones (but not the 8).
I am of the mindset that if it isn't going to be a spare, there isn't much point in getting the pins at all. I would rather go for a high risk shot that COULD end in a spare, than lay-up and just take as many pins as possible. Normally this is a wise move but in my particular case, if had laid it up and taken the easy 3, that would have meant I would have won by 2 points, instead of losing by 1.
of course I wouldn't know this is a factor until many frames later so it doesn't matter. There were also many situations where my opponent failed to pick up a spare and I didn't capitalize. There are many factors involved.
So now I am still in the 2nd division and will have to wait at least 2 weeks until I get another shot at it.
It doesn't really matter because I was happy with my performance (other than game 2) and we all had fun. The sport needs to be fun or it really isn't worth participating in.
There's always next week and now that it is starting to be so hot that it is almost impossible to participate in outdoor activities, I may start going for practice sessions on non league days.