These are questions that every bowler needs to ask themselves and have a game plan in mind for those tough nights when the lanes are not up to your expectations. You will have to admit that the lane conditions at River City Bowl have been very unpredictable all season long. The conditions have been easy to read at times, but it has not been anything that any normal everyday bowler could not handle, if you have your thinking cap on. I will admit that there have been nights that I have questioned myself and tried to figure out what was going on with the lanes and after deep thought and consideration of my game, I found out that it was " human error. "

Yes, we all need to admit that we are not perfect and a lot of the times we do make mistakes in our game. It is easy to blame it on the lanes, the oil pattern and the bowlers you are bowling next to, but we do make mistakes. Guess what? It is not the end of the world and yes, you will get over it if you want to but if you don’t, you will tell everyone within yelling distance the bad breaks you had that were not your fault.

We all need to have an alternate game in our back pocket for those times when the lanes are not easy and you have to figure out what you are going to do. Many bowlers have one line that they bowl with all the time and that doesn’t make your game versatile. You need to know an alternative line that you can go to if the lanes start to dry out and you have already gone to a ball that will not hook as much as the first ball that you started with.

Knowing how to play the lanes greatly affects your versatility and your success across all conditions. You need to have a variety of adjustments that you can try to fit the lane conditions. If you don’t you are really limiting yourself to one line and a certain type of condition.

This is why a lot of bowlers get into trouble when they go to a tournament and bowl on different conditions that they are not accustomed to bowling on. They find themselves in trouble and don’t know how to handle the lanes. That is why it is so important to have something that they can go to in a time of troubling conditions. Knowledge is power.

When you are practicing, try different lines that you normally do not shoot and try different techniques with your hand position and know the limits of your game. You don’t want to find yourself trying these in league or tournament play wondering if you can stand the test of time. Most bowlers do and if it works, that is in your favor but if it doesn’t, it can be embarrassing.

Don’t put yourself in this situation. It can be avoided and you have to understand your game and your limits. You must be comfortable playing on different areas of the lanes and be able to adjust to the conditions.

When young people bowl for the first time, it is obvious that they have a difficult time keeping the ball on the lane. One of the reasons bowling can be so difficult is that the lane is dramatically longer than it is wide. If you were to shrink it down to a model size, it would resemble the shape of a yardstick. Imagine trying to roll a ball bearing down a yardstick and make it stay on the surface the whole way from end to end.

A life-size lane is between 41 and 42 inches wide and 60 feet long from foul line to the head-pin. Just think of the precision it takes to deliver a bowling ball and reach a two-inch-wide target 60 feet away. It is not as easy as it make look when watching professional bowling on television or watching league players roll the ball effortlessly down the lane time after time.

So much of bowling is your muscle memory. Bowling is such a repetitive sport that you have to train your muscles to do the same thing time after time and with the same timing and finesse. If you falter just a little, boom…your game is busted and you find yourself searching for answers as to what happened. And the hardest thing is, you can’t see yourself make those mistakes. You have to go with a " gut " feeling and know when your timing is off and what to do to fix it.

As I have said so many times before, if you snooze you loose and if you are not thinking all the time, your game will pass you by and you will wonder what happened. Remember to bowl smarter not harder and knowledge is power.