Sandbagging is Cheating - What About Blocked Lanes?

I don't understand the way this thread is going.

Sandbagging is cheating - fair enough. How, though, do easy lane conditions count as cheating? If someone has a fairly high average gained due to "easy" conditions this would act against them in any form of competition where "proper" lane conditions were laid. If anything, normal house conditions are biased towards bowlers who regularly play on the tougher tournament conditions as house bowlers wouldn't have experienced them.

What easy conditions do, however it to maintain the interest of social/league bowlers who are more inclined to return each week and open their wallets/purses if they can see a reasonable score on the board after their games. If the conditions are made harsher then I suspect the game would lose its attraction to many. Show me a few social bowlers who are prepared to pay around $11 per game if they are almost guaranteed to have a crap score at the end of it.
 
Ok guys the thread isn't about how similar golf and bowling are. But I do agree in small parts with what everyone has said... Tonx hit the nail on the head when he mentioned it being a catch 22.

People wanna score high so more people enter into tournaments but the experienced bowlers dont want it to easy????

With the technology argument, I'm not that old but I like everyone who plays the game wanna score big BUT... how many 300 games are we seeing these days? which has resulted from a number of factors that have changed over the years... It is becoming easier and easier to score and we all know it.

For example Don Johnson a legend of the game and there are many others bowled something like 22 300 games in his career and is remembered as a great bowler because of this.

Do you think people will remember some of the bowlers of today who have bowled 20+ 300 games in 20 years time... I dont think so...
 
mongoliantreesloth said:
I don't understand the way this thread is going... Show me a few social bowlers who are prepared to pay around $11 per game if they are almost guaranteed to have a crap score at the end of it.
Click to expand...
OK. I'm not saying we lay sport patterns for league. Even I wouldn't want to see that. I'm saying that we crown oil instead of straight out ditching the lanes. We blend the high to the low point of the oil instead of laying steep transitions. It's still easy, but not ridiculous. If you miss right, you can still get a light hit, rather than sticking a 4 pin from over reaction from hitting the dry too early. You can actually leave corners in some sensible order.

How many houses do you go to where you can stand at the foul line and see with your naked eye where the oil stops on 10 board? Outside this, it's a feeble smear. Even if you keep the feeble smear and blend out to it, this would allow players to play different angles and see the lane differently. More importantly, it would make lanes last longer, as they wouldn't glaze outside 10 board.

Currently, there's so much oil in the middle of these houses, I reckon you could blend the existing volume out at no extra cost to the centre!
 
Easy Tiger wrote:

Yes, however in golf it's a given than you need to get the ball x amount of yards in the fewest amount of shots possible. As a short-hitter I assume you are therefore at a natural disadvantage in golf.

In that sense, bowling isn't the same.
Click to expand...

Sorry to get back to the golf v bowling analogy, but with players of equal ability, in general terms, the short hitter is a lot more accurate than the long hitter. I accept there are a few exceptions, ie Tiger Woods, but in general terms the short hitter has the advantage on tight courses because they are usually more accurate. In most cases, the same can be said for strokers and crankers. That is not to say there aren't exceptions, ie Belmo.
 
/hijack Perhaps not that they are more accurate, but more proportionally accurate.

If I Go golfing with the missus, she will only hit a shot 100 metres and it might just miss the fairway to the right, If I miss by the same amount of angle, I'm in the trees.... Timmie, you are correct :D

The best bowlers in the world have the ability to put more on it without sacrificing accuracy than the common league bowler. Even bowlers considered strokers in the pba (WWR, Duke, BohnIII etc) still put more on it than the average joe. They gain this skill by bowling on conditions that FORCE them to put something on it AND still hit a mark.

Its like a golfer having to hit a 300 metre drive to a 20 metre wide fairway to be able to play his second shot at the pin without hitting over trees.
 
Denver Sporting said:
Easy Tiger wrote:
Sorry to get back to the golf v bowling analogy, but with players of equal ability, in general terms, the short hitter is a lot more accurate than the long hitter. I accept there are a few exceptions, ie Tiger Woods, but in general terms the short hitter has the advantage on tight courses because they are usually more accurate. In most cases, the same can be said for strokers and crankers. That is not to say there aren't exceptions, ie Belmo.
Click to expand...
Sorry to burst your bubble there, but you are wrong about Tiger.

Tiger Woods in 2006 was 6th on the average drive list (306.4 yards), but
139th on the accuracy list (60.7%).

In the top 12 on the long driving list, the best that i have found was 12 place Scott Gutschewski (303.3 yards), he was 72th (65.0%).

The averge position for the top 15 in long distance, was around 150th place on accuracy. So yes, the short hitter is at an advantage.

So why is Tiger so good, because he hits the green. He was the leading Greens in Reg for 2006 with 74.2%. So that means that even though he missed the fairway 39.3% of the time, he was able to recoverabout 30% of these times (on rough maths) and hit the green to be able to make birdie or better. Then from that, he averaged 68.7 per round, the next best was 69.5 (Jim Furyk). Nearly one shot per round better!!

What does this tell you, to me this shows that you can have all the power and stroke in the world, still be all over the shop, but if you can recover, you can still be the best in the world. So, everyone, LEARN HOW TO SPARE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just like golf, bowling is a game of recovery, if you miss, you need to spare to keep your chances of bowling a good score alive. How many people have said "I bowled 230 but left 2 frames open"? and they were single pin misses?
just like golf, in bowling, there are easy places and hard places. I don't care what anyone says, even in golf people talk about how, this place the winner shot 25 under, must be easy. Well it isn't. They shot 25 under becasue they are the best in the world. In the same tournement, some of the people that have the right to be there, still shot over the card. Why, number of reasons, could be that they averaged 36 putts for the round, whereas the winner averaged 29. That is 7 shots a round difference just there. Just like spare shooting.

One favourite quote of golf is this "3 bad shots and 1 good putt is still par on any par 4 in the world" So, 1 bad shot and 1 good spare is still a closed frame, regardless of the lane condition, on any lane in the world.

So what right does anyone have to complain about lane conditions. How come no one says, damm the lanes where ................(easy/hard, you fill in the blank), hey but at least they were consistant, just shows i need to work on ................ (spare shooting / timing / footwork / accuracy / release / surface preperation etc)

I know this has little to do with the sandbagging thing, but......

Andrew
 
I read this and thank my lucky stars that I bowled my 300 game in 1982 instead of today.I also think while I have only one, I wonder now that I am bowling again, if I could add to this total or not.I doubt if Berri knows how to block lanes properly yet.In time this will happen, so maybe I will that 170 bowler entering a tournment just for kicks in seeing how I go on blocked lanes.
 
Jason
I don't think blocked lanes are an issue anymore , the thing that im starting to see now that could become a huge issue is the practice of putting down a lane condition where the pattern on the left side of the lane is way different to that what is layed down on the right side .
This cannot be a fair condition , it should allways be a mirror image of each other . Everbody should go into a tournament on a level playing field ????
 
is good is said:
Jason
I don't think blocked lanes are an issue anymore , the thing that im starting to see now that could become a huge issue is the practice of putting down a lane condition where the pattern on the left side of the lane is way different to that what is layed down on the right side .
This cannot be a fair condition , it should allways be a mirror image of each other . Everbody should go into a tournament on a level playing field ????
Click to expand...
I think the purpose of the oil is being overlooked somewhat, the pattern should be the same on either side with depth proportionate to the number of left handed bowlers you have. It was about protection of the lane surface originally as I recall.

The choice though is to either have the lanes the same at the start, and the right break down significantly more by the end of the day, or drastically different at the start so they finish at about the same.

I think with all that said, logically I don't see how you'll ever have it the same on both sides UNLESS you have the same ratio of left to right hand bowlers - which is way out of the control of those setting the patterns.
 
So seeming this is a form of cheating...
and 170 average bowlers are averaging 220

hmm...thats 50 pins difference.

Does that mean that all the 210 average bowlers are averaging 260?

Who here averages 260? 250? 240?

I know I sure dont come close.

If your averaging 170-180 in a major tournament.

YOU CANT SPARE!!!!

So the real question is... how does a ditch or a sports pattern affect ones ability to throw a plastic straight!

So if you think your league pattern is too easy, leave your 300 dollar balls at home, and take a plastic. thatll make things tough, and improve your sparing.
 
A fortnight ago i rolled a 240 something and a guy bowling on another lane rolled a 232. Although the scores reflected me as scoring higher, I was peed off for leaving one open frame. The other fella had a clean game with no opens. Athough i won on the scorecard, imo he bowled the better game. (not to mention that he is a 140ave and me 177ave)
 
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