Two weeks worth of no-thumb fun!
I apologize for the sporadic responses these past few weeks. Now that my high school softball coaching season has started, it's tougher to find time to post. As such, today you'll get a great, two blogs for the price of one!
February 29, 2016
Game 1
9/ X 9/ 9/ X X 9/ X X XX9 - 237
I'm still on the thumbless kick, and this night saw the debut of my new Black Hammer urethane ball. I would prefer to be using another Brunswick-DV8-Radical piece, but, sadly, there is no urethane in the their respective lineups at this point in time, and old Karmas and Avalanches are hard to find, so I had to make due.
In any case, I LOVE the look this urethane piece offered here. To be honest, other than a 2-pin in the first frame, every other ball was packed solid. The only thing derailing me from 289 were two stone 9-pins and a ringing 10. Nevertheless, I was impressed.
Game 2
X 7/ 9/ 9/ 9/ 8/ X 8- X 9/6 - 177
Okay, so this wasn't a shining example of how to handle transition. I left three consecutive 10-pins in frames 3-5, and then I started getting a bit of goofy reaction, particularly in the 8th when I left a 2-10 on a ball that I liked off my hand. Still, the drawback of this no-thumb experiment is a loss of release consistency, so perhaps I missed that one at the bottom. In any case, I still thought that I threw the ball better than this score indicated.
Game 3
X X X X X 9/ 6/ 7/ 6/ X9- - 227
After a move inside and softening up the speed, my look drastically improved to start Game 3. The first six shots were all high flush, but a ringing 10-pin stopped the streak. From there, I went high on the next two shots and light in the ninth before counting 19 in the 10th to finish with 227 for the game and 641 for the night.
March 7, 2016
Game 1
9- 6/ X 9/ X 5- 81 X X 9/9 - 166
Well, clearly, this wasn't the start I was looking for. The sad thing is that I actually liked most of those shots off of my hand; some just reacted in ways that I didn't expect. When you add that to laughably bad one-handed spare attempts (clearly, bowling mostly no-thumb has caused some rust to form on my 1-handed delivery), and you get a -34 start.
Game 2
7/ X 9/ 9- X X 9/ 8/ X XXX - 215
The Black Hammer urethane was still looking good here, but another missed 10-pin and so-so carry caused this one to end at a solid, yet not spectacular, 215.
Game 3
X 7/ X 9/ X X 81 X X 6/X - 202
Lane transition got me a little bit here, esepcially early as I needed to figure out where to move and what speed to throw. Still, I managed things pretty well with only an unexpected miss of the 4-7 slowing me down. In the end, things finished up at 202 for the game and 583 for the set.
Overall, I'm still having a lot of fun with the no-thumb bowling. Like anything, it's just taking time to develop some new muscle memory and to get the hang of some things. Still, there is a lot of potential there if/when I get the fundamentals down a bit better. If nothing else, I'm enjoying myself, so that's what it's all about!
As always, thanks for reading!
