On Shooting 800
I shot 800 for three games about a week-and-a-half ago now. I've gone and bowled a bit since (9 games), and given that I thought I would take a moment to reflect on it.
Here's the thing. I talk a bit and do some math here and there about the probability of shooting a 300 game. Shooting 800 is harder, by pretty much all accounts. You really can't miss your shot at all. Not only that, you have to be lucky insofar as that you avoid bad luck. To fend off bad luck for an extended period of time? That's hard! So hard, in fact, that while I sit and think a little bit about the perfect game from time to time, the very idea of 800 is pretty much completely off my radar. Even the series where I've shot perfect games I haven't had a chance; I think my highest previous series was 773, which was in practice.
The other thing is that 300 is constantly staring you in the face as you go. Say you have the first four or five in a row. You look up and can very quickly see that and now you're thinking "hey, I'm almost halfway there!" The idea of 800 isn't even a real possibility until you reach the third game. After two games I did a little mental math in my head to see what it would take to get there, and I was rolling well enough to do it, but knowing that I needed a 265? Well that's it, isn't it? I mean, To shoot 260+ you are basically allowed one miss.
"One miss" isn't exactly the right phrase. When you're in an excellent groove, missing isn't your worry. Your worry is throwing a great shot that somehow fails to knock over that last damn pin. But at the same time, you can't worry about that, because your job is to throw the best shot you can. You can't control the pins falling or not, exactly, all you can control is what you do to the ball. If you're not careful, you get caught up in the trap of over-analysis; "the ball didn't react quite right on that shot, so maybe if I tweak this little thing just a bit..." and drive yourself nuts. I think I had to stop once or twice and just tell myself "trust it." Even then, as soon as I release the ball, I start thinking "Oh God, did I do enough with that one? I don't think it came off my hand exactly right," but sure enough I was in the right spot and they fell.
I'm trying to come up with the proper comparison to that series that would ring true for everybody, and I'm not quite sure I can come up with it. There's a lot of stuff at play here. It's not like getting an A in a hard class, because you're probably working really hard to get that A from day one as your goal. That feeling I described as I release a shot isn't totally unlike giving your answer to Regis Philbin on Who Wants to be a Millionaire only to have to wait five minutes for him to say if you got it right, but you don't get to choose to stop like on that show, you just keep going. It might be similar to winning a local poker tournament that gets you entry to the World Series of Poker and then getting to the final table, but I'm not sure that's a salient example.
In any event, I may not have been perfect last week, but I was DAMN good.
Now I get to decide what ring I want.
Here's the thing. I talk a bit and do some math here and there about the probability of shooting a 300 game. Shooting 800 is harder, by pretty much all accounts. You really can't miss your shot at all. Not only that, you have to be lucky insofar as that you avoid bad luck. To fend off bad luck for an extended period of time? That's hard! So hard, in fact, that while I sit and think a little bit about the perfect game from time to time, the very idea of 800 is pretty much completely off my radar. Even the series where I've shot perfect games I haven't had a chance; I think my highest previous series was 773, which was in practice.
The other thing is that 300 is constantly staring you in the face as you go. Say you have the first four or five in a row. You look up and can very quickly see that and now you're thinking "hey, I'm almost halfway there!" The idea of 800 isn't even a real possibility until you reach the third game. After two games I did a little mental math in my head to see what it would take to get there, and I was rolling well enough to do it, but knowing that I needed a 265? Well that's it, isn't it? I mean, To shoot 260+ you are basically allowed one miss.
"One miss" isn't exactly the right phrase. When you're in an excellent groove, missing isn't your worry. Your worry is throwing a great shot that somehow fails to knock over that last damn pin. But at the same time, you can't worry about that, because your job is to throw the best shot you can. You can't control the pins falling or not, exactly, all you can control is what you do to the ball. If you're not careful, you get caught up in the trap of over-analysis; "the ball didn't react quite right on that shot, so maybe if I tweak this little thing just a bit..." and drive yourself nuts. I think I had to stop once or twice and just tell myself "trust it." Even then, as soon as I release the ball, I start thinking "Oh God, did I do enough with that one? I don't think it came off my hand exactly right," but sure enough I was in the right spot and they fell.
I'm trying to come up with the proper comparison to that series that would ring true for everybody, and I'm not quite sure I can come up with it. There's a lot of stuff at play here. It's not like getting an A in a hard class, because you're probably working really hard to get that A from day one as your goal. That feeling I described as I release a shot isn't totally unlike giving your answer to Regis Philbin on Who Wants to be a Millionaire only to have to wait five minutes for him to say if you got it right, but you don't get to choose to stop like on that show, you just keep going. It might be similar to winning a local poker tournament that gets you entry to the World Series of Poker and then getting to the final table, but I'm not sure that's a salient example.
In any event, I may not have been perfect last week, but I was DAMN good.
Now I get to decide what ring I want.