This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2018
When I last wrote about pace of play, in the August 2017 issue of Bowlers Journal International, I suggested we bring the pace-of-play discussion to bowling, as it has been prevalent in every other sport for years.
Now, more than a year later, that discussion is still standing on the approach, yielding to another discussion three pairs down, then dabbing its rosin bag, then wiping its shoe, stepping up to the dots, standing statuesquely for a minute or two, finally taking one-and-a-half steps, then turning around, setting the ball on the ball return and restarting the entire process all over again.
Why do people complain about a three-hour baseball game, a four-hour football game or a six-hour final minute of a basketball game, but three five-hour blocks of bowling in a single day are treated as normal? What fan has 15 hours available to watch all that? And then watch it again the next day and the day after that?
In order to fix the problem, we first need to identify the problem. Having spoken with several current and former PBA players, a few common causes of unbelievably slow play come up:
Players Don’t Know the Cross
This is probably the most frequent explanation, particularly when inexperienced players are in the field. Bowlers who aren’t accustomed to yielding an entire pair in each direction sometimes get confused and don’t bowl when it’s their turn, which can then throw off the rotation several pairs left and right.
This kills a few seconds each time it happens, plus another few seconds when the guy on the adjacent pair takes time to yell at the offending bowler. For every 10 times this happens, we add about an extra minute to the block. A convenient concept to blame, but not the worst offender.
Players Know the Cross but Yield Anyway
Some players aren’t content with yielding one pair left and one pair right. Some will yield two or three pairs in either direction. Or, when tournament directors place dead pairs in between competition pairs in an effort to speed things up, players will still yield to the pairs beyond the dead pairs, rendering all efforts useless, and technically putting everyone into violation of the shot clock.
This offense is way more prevalent than players not knowing the cross, and also more egregious, as it’s intentional, whether conscious or not.
Players Chastise Players for Adhering to the Rules
On occasion, a player won’t yield do a dead pair and will bowl regardless of whether someone is bowling two pairs left or right. This is well within the rules, but somehow offends another player, who then takes time to yell at the non-offending offender, probably adding even more time to the block than if the original player would’ve played by the unwritten rules rather than the real rules, ultimately slowing the pace despite good intentions.
Thumb Grips
This idea has been finding hold of late, but I’m not convinced. The ability to remove a thumb grip from one ball and put it in another is tremendous for players, allowing them to keep the same feel on every ball they throw. Unfortunately, if a player doesn’t strike, he has to wait for his ball to come back so he can get the thumb grip, remove it and place it into his spare ball. The actual switching of the interchangeable grips doesn’t take long at all, but waiting for the ball can.
However, we can’t blame that wait period, because the ball almost always returns to the player before the bowlers left and right have yielded, stalled, reset and yielded again. Thus, as long as the player removes and replaces his grip immediately upon receiving the ball, the time it takes to do so is inconsequential. Thumb grips will only become the issue if we can eliminate all the other simultaneous delays that currently cover for the grips’ culpability.
So, what’s the overall cause? All these things and more. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution: more games.