Bowling Lessons By Bill Spigner

My "Throwback Thursday" photo this month is Red Burnham’s Journal Inquirer’s “Knock on Wood” column from April 13, 1984 and it kind of summed up my 1984 PBA Winter Tour season which was the worse of my career. It started off with motor home issues (a long story) and continued with my struggles on the lanes. Unfortunately, I was never able to figure out what to do.

The PBA Winter Tour was always the hardest part of the PBA Tour. We bowled on wood surfaces and by the time the Tour started in January most of the surfaces we bowled on were pretty beat up—the heads hooked early and the lanes were oiled fairly flat. The 1984 Winter Tour saw many straight, hard throwing players winning. I was softer and kind of a tweener style as it was called back-in-the-day and it was a style that was between the hard straight players and the high rev hook players. Regardless of what we bowled on it was my job to figure out how to score, and in 1984 I did not.

As Red wrote in his article, I drilled up a 90-hardness rubber ball—the AMF 3Dot Classic (a ball I used in the mid to late 1960’s) for the match play portion of the event after making the cut in 24th place. I still remember how hard it was to get the ball down the lanes because of how early it hooked. I used a lot of loft and speed to try and control the pocket. I did bowl OK in match play and did have a chance to make the TV show, but I ended up finishing in the middle of the pack.

When I went on Tour, Bradley Bowl became my home house when Pete Couture took over the pro shop at the center. He would drill my equipment for me and encouraged me to learn to do it myself, which I did. Red was Bradley Bowl’s General Manager and he opened the doors to Bradley Bowl to me for free practice anytime I wanted.

Red was one of the great bowling GM’s in the northeast and a great supporter of bowling on all levels. It was a very sad day for me when he passed away on December 31, 2018—he was a big part of me being able to succeed on the PBA Tour.

The difficult part is knowing when you are right, but more importantly when you realize you're wrong.

Want to see other "Quotes of the Month"? Click on this link-- https://www.billspigner.com/quotes

There is a good mixture of serious and more humorous quotes.

My “Bill’s Tip of the Month” is all about doing Drills from one of the questions in my March, 2019 Bowlers Journal International featured column this month.

Here is my tip this month—my 40th one. All 40 tips can be viewed here or on my "Tip of the Month" page on my website--https://www.billspigner.com/tips.php

Doing drills can be an important part of your practice. There are many different types of drills, and regardless of the one you do the process of executing them correctly is very important. Drills are used to isolate and fix specific issues you want to work on, allowing you to focus on the mental training or commonly called muscle memory of doing them without needing to score or roll a ball with full force.

The drill featured in my video here is a no-step drill which should be the first drill you should learn to do correctly before venturing onto other physical drills. The drill incorporates a lot of things—setting up the proper finish position with your legs and correct upper body position using a short loose swing, good hand position and how your torso functions to aid your release.

It’s vitally important to build your set up correctly before executing a swing and release in a drill. Drills should be executed with very little physical exertion—it should be more of a mental activity. Remember this is practice, not competition—knocking down pins is not the goal—building muscle memory is the goal.

Congrats ! to these students of mine who have had some nice accomplishments recently.

Shane Asbra bowled an incredible qualifying score of 1,293 for 5 games—a 258.6 average—in the U16 Division of the June Elite Youth Tour Dexter Elite Open. His five games were 206, 244, 268, 276, and 299 (844 for his last 3 games) and he qualified #1 for the finals. Making his score even more extraordinary is that the #2 qualifier shot 1,041 (208.2 average) and the 3rd qualifier shot 974 (194.8 average). He went on to win the event.

And then one week later he finished 2nd to PBA Touring Pro Cam Crowe in the weekly Poplar Creek Bowl’s King of the Hill run by Jerry Marrs, beating out 107 other high-level bowlers.

15-year old Mayah Miller bowled a wonderful 253 game in her Lakeside Recreation Youth league—a nice 97 pins over her 156 average—and the highest girl’s scratch score for the season.

She also was named Honorable Mention All-Conference in the North Suburban Conference bowling for Lake Zurich High School. A nice accomplishment for a freshman.

Aaron Tagawa shot a fantastic 800 series (on the dot!)—a huge accomplishment for anyone at any age—and Aaron was true beginner 3 years ago. His 290 game was the highest of his career as was the 800 series also. Aaron bowls for Vernon Hills High School and will be a junior this year.