World Cup Qualifier

Yet another event on wood! Not ideal for the more modern of eqipment, tends to get tracked up in 12 seconds! anyway...........had my rant.

Played the 1st round on Sat. afternoon expexcting them to be pretty dry. Got more juice than I bargained for but all the same it didn't stay to damp on the fronts for long.
Struggled the first 2 games, they actually played trickier than I expected I tried to utilise an outside line knowing nobody else would be there, but this was too tight an area. Eventually after moving more to the middle of the lane out to the track I found a bit of consistency.
After shooting 190, 196, 201 I reeled off consistent pocket shots for 248, 207, 248, 207, 248.

Was fairly happy with the eventual block. (145 over).
All the way through the block I was throwing the Swarm and the Dry Zone solid with similar layouts (to be reviewed) but the Zone just giving me a bit more length when required.

The 2nd round on Sunday was a tail of 2 "three game" scores. Using the same balls but not executing as well as I did Saturday, I shot 521 for 3 of them and 737 for the other 3!! A bit of fishing around for better carry backfired, things have to be tried sometimes though.
I was still in a good position going into round 3 though.

Round 3 I stuck to playing for the pocket and keeping the ball in play rather than looking for big scores, this served me well as with the same equipment again I shot games of 216, 216, 230 and 213 giving me a grand total of 268 over from 18 games. Loving the Swarm and Dry Zone Solid!!

Into the robin starting in 6th place I decided in the 2nd game after a stinker of a 1st to try something else. I took out the Classic Zone which is very strong on the back but I knew I would have to be moving very deep and quickly because of the traffic on the heads. The classic allowed me to do this without having to overhook with my hand. I played quite well most of the robin, which was very tiring (19 games on Sunday) shooting a low games of 173, 187. The rest of them were over 200 with a high of 244 so quite consistent but not particularly heavy scoring.

With the robin finishing at 11 o'clock there were lots of tired bodies!! I finished the event in a respectable 5th ave.214 from 27 games.

Good luck to Nick in Mexico!!

Next stop Barcelona!

Euro 5's at Ipswich

Bowled in this event with my beloved Jo and 3 English ladies!! These being Jemma Smith, Nikki Harvey (wallbanger) and Lisa John.

The first squad we played was the singles (5 games). I started initially with the pearl Avalanche, reason being the lanes were quite dry and this was on wood so the ball read earlier than you would see on synthetic lanes. After making a couple of good shots without the desired outcome I decided to change to the Swarm and move my feet and target deeper to try and create more margin for error and improved carry. This worked immediately as I went off the sheet for 290 first game after changing in the 3rd frame!! 2nd game played and scored well again aside from a poor shot in the 9th finishing with 245. The next 3 games I couldn't string the 10's together as previously I had so only managed to plus 10 more pins, thus finishing the block 145 over. This eventually placed me in 10th for the event.

Lisa did us proud though by winning the ladies singles section!!

Onto the first 3 games of team. We played these on Saturday afternoon/early evening.
I was thankful for playing these games with girls as there was less traffic on the deeper part of the lane on my team, this benefitted me greatly. As a team we shot 167 over for the 3 games, I got 185 of them!!!!! (279, 259, 257) all of the set with the SWARM. Looks like a goody!

2nd 3 games of team I didn't bowl well and the lanes played quite a bit different for me and quite a few others, I started with a 135!!!!!!!!!!! then made a drastic move of line and ball and hand position, and so finished with 550 so could have been a lot worse! We came 9th in the team so a fair effort from all of us. Lisa was 2nd in the all-events, Jemma 3rd and Jo 4th. I came 9th in the mens so not too bad, ave.225.

Next event World Cup qulifier.

Swarm ball review coming soon!!