Tenpin bowling coaching, bowling tips, bowling tournament information.

Swindon Handicap Doubles

September 2002 - Swindon Again

Back to Swindon for the second time this year.

During the run up to this tournament we put in some dedicated practice as I needed to work on my game. Practicing different lines with my different balls on the first occasion and then just bowling together as a team seemed to help us at the time. The Saturday night before the tournament for me was then spent washing my bowling balls (see here) followed by a clean with a reactive ball cleaner. On my older ball, I even found a part of the logo which I had forgotten about!

On the Sunday it was an 8am start again to make sure we were there in time even if there is trouble on the roads. As it turned out, apart from a short foggy stretch we had a clear run and made Swindon in good time for registration, 12:30 for the 1pm squad - which was delayed for some bowlers from Newbury who were suck in traffic! Assigned to lane 12 and moving to lane 7 after 3 games, we started just in front of the ball park which was quite helpful. One set of stretching exercises later and we were ready to go. 5 minutes practice showed my older ball working better so I started with that one, but two games later it was not getting the desired reaction so a ball change was made to my Track Synergy ETS to give 202 scratch in the third game.

A move down the house followed but by this time, either my release was getting worse or the lane conditions were breaking down as I was consistently inside my target. Richard was suffering split after split on lane 8 with strikes on lane 7 which was rather frustrating. Whilst our lower revving shots were failing to carry, our opponents were showing us the way. Steve Winterburn from Coventry, with a higher rev rate put in a 266 game against us. A change back to my older ball (AMF Dick Webber Legacy Reactive) helped me keep a reasonable level of scoring, but nowhere near enough to make an impression on the leaderboard.

Name	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Game 4	Game 5	Game 6	Total
Richard Trevett	148	183	164	167	145	191	998
Mark Harvey	164	148	202	170	184	170	1038
Handicap	44	44	44	44	44	44	264
Total	356	375	410	381	373	405	2300

Not one of our better scores, placing us 48th out of 60 on the day. Jaguars, who won in February were third but the 'Didjeridoos' won with a massive 2720 after handicap.

Back to Cornwall for more practice!

Thanks again to Max Beard and his team of helpers for another well run tournament.