This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, March, 2022
Now that the PBA Tour is once again in full pun-intended swing and both the PBA50 and PWBA Tours will get underway in the next couple months, we’re seeing a lot of practice. We’re enjoying unofficial practice, official practice, official unofficial practice, official pre-practice practice, unofficial post-practice practice, official post-pre-practice-practice practice, non-competition-pair practice, competition-pair practice, warm-up practice, unofficial TV-pair practice, official TV-pair practice and the ol’ ball-change-on-a-fill-shot practice hidden within an actual game.
If you’re a pro, you’re not seeing enough practice, particularly on the TV pair, and if you’re a fan, you’re either wondering why there is so much practice or why the scoring units aren’t on while the pros bowl what appears to be a faster version of qualifying.
In fact, many will argue that practice is more compelling than qualifying. There are no scores on the monitors, but the pace is quicker and the players are using their insight to work out their strategies for the much, much slower next 3-5 days that do use scoring monitors, even if still no one knows the score. Practice is legitimately interesting, which is another attribute it holds over qualifying.
Beyond that, there are a lot of exceptional things about practice. One of the absolute best is prior to match play, which generally features pre-practice practice held on non-competition pairs prior to official practice on competition pairs. Between the two practice sessions, the tournament director announces over the PA, essentially, “Players, hold up on your practice. It’s time to start practice.”
Any announcement decreeing an end to practice is inevitably accompanied by a cacophony of pins crashing after the tournament director orders an end to pins crashing. These adult professionals are performing the equivalent of a peewee hockey practice, during which every coach’s whistle is immediately followed by 12 pucks banging against the boards.
With all this unofficial and official practice going on, it’s hard to imagine an opportunity for even more practice, but professional bowlers are cunning. The penalty for practicing outside of practice is a potential code of ethics violation that comes with a fine, but crafty bowlers have found ways to get additional practice in between practice and they’ve done it without breaking any rules.
We start with The Practice Slide. There isn’t much better on a surveillance-style live stream than the pre-practice or between-games Practice Slide. Since players only get official practice on their starting pairs, they can’t take a full delivery before their subsequent games, but they can walk to the line and slide to the line (as long as they’ve yielded both ways, of course).
So, if they can walk to the line and slide, what’s to stop them from making an actual approach to the line and sliding? Nothing. And, if they can make an actual approach to the line and slide, what prevents them from adding an arm swing to it? Again, nothing. And, if they can make a full approach to the line and slide while swinging their arm, why can’t they put a ball in their hand? They can. The only thing they can’t do is deliver the ball. The Practice Slide has evolved into The Practice Balk. And it’s entirely legal. The only downside is many of them are taking it into competition, although we can’t fault them, because once The Practice Balk becomes part of The Process, it must be trusted.
Anything that wouldn’t be a foul during competition is legal outside the confines of practice. Before practice, after practice, between games, even during games, these things can all be done without repercussions. Like a baseball pitcher constantly throwing to first base with no penalty although such an act should be designated a ball in the count, bowlers can practice absolutely everything aside from letting go of the ball without penalty. At the line, that is. Bowlers can let go of the ball anywhere else whenever they want.
Non-practice practice makes imperfect perfect.