Duckpin Bowling
Last night I met some friends for bowling. When I got there I found out that it wasn't ten-pin bowling - or "big ball bowling" as they call it - it was duckpin bowling.
Duckpin bowling is popular around here, and I've heard people talk about it for years, but I'd never been ('til last night, that is)...
The Equipment:
The balls remind me of skeeballs, but a little larger in diameter.
There are no finger holes, unlike "big ball" bowling balls. You just hold the ball like this:
The pins look like someone took the normal ten-pin kind and stuck them in a shrinking machine. They are probably 1/2 the size of a regular pin...
The Technique:
Each time its your turn you get 3 tries to knock down all 10 duckpins (as opposed to only 2 tries in ten-pin bowling).
Plus with duckpin bowling is harder to be accurate with your throws (according to some articles I found today). I certainly found that to be the case. For me I would get one really accurate shot during each turn (well not always), but then I couldn't figure out what I'd done differently that time to capitalize on it to improve my next roll. I'm sure it gets better with practice.
I feel better knowing that, unlike ten-pin bowling (in which a perfect score of 300 is often reported by skilled bowlers) no such perfect score has ever been reported in duckpin bowling.
And by the way, my score on my first game of duckpin bowling was a 40. That's not very good. :)
Duckpin bowling is popular around here, and I've heard people talk about it for years, but I'd never been ('til last night, that is)...
The Equipment:
The balls remind me of skeeballs, but a little larger in diameter.
There are no finger holes, unlike "big ball" bowling balls. You just hold the ball like this:
The pins look like someone took the normal ten-pin kind and stuck them in a shrinking machine. They are probably 1/2 the size of a regular pin...
The Technique:
Each time its your turn you get 3 tries to knock down all 10 duckpins (as opposed to only 2 tries in ten-pin bowling).
Plus with duckpin bowling is harder to be accurate with your throws (according to some articles I found today). I certainly found that to be the case. For me I would get one really accurate shot during each turn (well not always), but then I couldn't figure out what I'd done differently that time to capitalize on it to improve my next roll. I'm sure it gets better with practice.
I feel better knowing that, unlike ten-pin bowling (in which a perfect score of 300 is often reported by skilled bowlers) no such perfect score has ever been reported in duckpin bowling.
And by the way, my score on my first game of duckpin bowling was a 40. That's not very good. :)