Bowling Tournaments - The carry you need to get yourself over the top

To answer this question, you have to understand what is happening to the lanes nearing the end of a tournament:

-Assuming you are a right hander, you can imagine what happens to the oil after several games...the enemy you are facing is CARRYDOWN...it robs your ball of the driving force it had near the beginning of the games, instead of hitting the pins hard it's sliding into them-causing the inevitable 10 pins leaves. So what to do?

-The best solution to this is to try and play where others are not (is everyone swinging the ball? Go more down-and-in. Is everyone playing down-and-in? Move outside, change your hand/wrist/finger positions and start swinging the ball outside). It only makes sense that if you playing the same line for multiple games that the carry is going to evaporate.

-Sometimes, no matter what you do, you aren't going to carry. The people who win tournaments are the ones who don't beat themselves. If you have a solid spare game, you can compete in any tournament where the condition is difficult (remember that 2 strikes in a row and all spares is around a 210 game!). The ones who lose are the ones who self-destruct mentally and miss spares they otherwise would have made.

So my advice, in closing would be as follows:

-Practice all different hand/wrist/finger positions with all the balls you currently have. Know how they will react with what position and take notes-no one outside of the top pros/amateurs will remember all of that!

-Get your spare game down pat; know where to stand and what to do for any makeable spare you will face

-If you do throw an errant shot, go for the wood, not the glory. Many people miss winning or cashing in a tournament by less then 10 pins, or 1 spare!

-Most of all, you have to keep your head up. If you start getting mad/angry, you are toast, and if you start thinking about past shots, you are beating yourself before you throw the next one.