11thFrame.com Open Weekend

[custom_frame_left shadow=”on”][/custom_frame_left] Last weekend was the 11thframe.com Open in Dubuque, Iowa with a stellar field and about 140 entries.

Let me take you through my whole week prior to bowling this event. I could barely walk. I am not sure what happened to my right foot but I have been having issues the past few months and have been in excruciating pain. I have one doctors diagnosis that a tendon is messed up and is rubbing against a bone or something like that. Not sure how accurate that is as no matter how much time I have given it to heal, it always hurts.  Sometimes much worse than others, but the pain is always there. I wasn’t even sure I was going to bowl the event even though we were going regardless so that Jackie could bowl. Thankfully the pain was mild enough throughout the weekend itself that it didn’t affect my bowling at all.

I bowled A squad on Saturday morning and was able to cross with Jeff Richgels. This was the first time I have ever met Jeff in person and he is an awesome guy. Had a lot of great conversations on a lot of different topics throughout the weekend. Anyways, during practice I noticed a lot of friction in the pattern. My pin up balls were transitioning way too quickly and inconsistently. I started with a pin down solid ball (Storm IQ Tour Solid) to try and blend it all out, which worked very well. Even though I scored well the first three games I didn’t really like the shape I was getting out of the IQ Tour anymore and decided to get out a pin down Hyroad. I got to +121 for the 6 game block and led A squad by about 40 pins. After B squad (which was by far the strongest squad) and C squad, I had dropped to 6^th. I was fine with that as I knew I hadn’t executed to the best of my ability in my qualifying and in my opinion thought I had the best ball reaction in the building and knew if I threw it better the next day I would win. It’s kind of funny. Somehow I just felt it. It was like a 6^th sense or something and I’ve gotten this feeling a few times before and each time I’ve won. WISH I WOULD GET IT ALL THE TIME LOL. Anyways the next day was 12 games no re oil on a 39ft pattern that already had some built in friction. It was a long block to say the least LOL. After 6 games I was already lofting the cap. By game 9 I was leading by I believe 258 pins with all the bonus pins I had accumulated. You bowled against every person in the field every game and got 1 bonus pin added to your games score for every bowler you beat. There were a total of 43 possible bonus pins per game. Right as game 9 ended I split my thumb open at the base. It didn’t hurt too much however I was forced to patch it up and the texture of the patch really bothered me as I never use skin patches. I like the natural feel of my thumb in the ball. The next three games I proceeded to bowl 160 190 170 and dropped all the way to 3^rd for the step ladder. I was pretty furious. I patched my thumb back up and practiced on the practice lane for a while as I waited for the 4-5 match to finish. I was able to finally get used to it a little more and bowled I believe 229-227-253 in the finals to win all three matches.

I really didn’t know what to do in the final match as I have never been in that position before as an adult bowler. I was considering asking Jon Schalow if he just wanted to split the prize money or chop it up a little differently (as I’m not a fan of bowling all those games in a day just to have a step ladder and have it come down to one match, even though it worked in my favor this time). But in the end I decided that I wanted to know and feel the pressure while bowling and the emotions I would feel if I won and I wanted to feel the disappointment if I lost. It is the only way to learn.

It’s kind of funny actually because I had another blog written and was going to post it after the weekend was over. As I am in Thailand now, I don’t have my external hard drive with me where I keep my blogs. The post basically said how frustrating it has been to work on my game and not see results. As many of you know I had been working on my timing and trying to fix it so my swing would be straighter so I could repeat at a higher level. I hadn’t bowled well at all lately in tournaments and was frustrated because I was trying to incorporate what I was working on while I was competing. I felt like this was the way to go because anytime I had worked on it in the past I gave up on it because it was affecting my performance in competition. So my question was, do I stick with what I’m working on and hope it works out but continue to lose money in the short run or do I go back to what’s comfortable? Well what was comfortable hadn’t been working much so I decided to stick with what I was working on. And it paid off. Got to think bigger picture here and what will work in the long run even if it affects me now. Hard work ALWAYS pays off!!!

 

So far Thailand is awesome! The food is delicious and the bowling is going pretty well! I will write a full blog of my travels when I get back home!