I play slowly. I know it affects the tournament experience. Let's talk

Junk Drawer
21

I’m pretty sure that once I get up there, I’m 15 seconds to release the ball. And that’s what makes me think a shot clock wouldn’t do much to change my pace, except maybe to limit my false starts or times stepping back.

I actually tried shooting quickly today because I was laying down some new muscle patterns. I noticed that I threw well and that I felt tired. :wink: I think it’s a confidence issue for me: if I believe more in my shot, then I don’t need to cling to a longer preshot routine to convince myself to feel comfortable.

22

Grip it and rip it baby!

2 Likes
23

I still want to breathe and that’s going to be the bottleneck. The big difference will be jumping up there as soon as I’m ready

I have about 6 weeks to the next tournament. We’ll see how quick I go.

24

Once upon a time tour events experimented with ways to increase speed of play. Over time Chess clocks, timed matches have been used during national championships as well as tour championships. The lifespan of each was short lived. Those distracted by slow play are not focused on their game. That is their problem to resolve.

1 Like
25

Ooof, I think I may end up being the unpopular opinion here, adding my two cents regardless.

For context: I’d say I’m an average bowler pace wise.

I think it comes down to a reflection of…how is the slow play affecting others? Has it thrown off the entire pace of the tournament? Is it impeding others ability to play and enjoy themselves? If so, I’d be reflecting of ways to improve.

Everyone pays their money to be there, so everyone gets a chance to play. However, we have to mindful of others time including the houses hosting us, and people who have places to be after their shifts, those who are playing the following ones.

I had a tournament this year where the pace of play was thrown off by a slow player. I couldn’t tell you what their scores were because I wasn’t paying attention. The second shift was coming in long before we were done our last game. It wasn’t a great feeling. I tried to give it some perspective of “maybe this is a one off” but was told this bowler regularly takes that long.

If you’re in a big game, a big moment, a make or break situation, and you’re taking your time (regardless of result); I get it. I’ve had moments my anxiety has been out of control and I need a few extra seconds on the approach for one more breath. But these aren’t the norms…these are the exceptions.

Regular, super slow play, that impacts every tournamnent?
I’d be working on finding ways to practice my routine and consciously work towards speeding up my pace.

Also side note if we’re going to get nerdy and technical: Tournament Official’s Handbook. 5.9: Tournament Time Management. Although not formal rules, I think it’s good to be mindful the thought and set up that goes into making a tournament schedule, and furthermore, doing our best as competitiors to ensure we’re accounting for this to make the event as smooth as possible for all volunteers.

26

Curious why it’s more frustrating to bowl with a less skilled bowler than someone impacting the pace of play. What is a realistic cut off score for someone to not impede on the enjoyment of others at major events?

27

Curious why it’s more frustrating to bowl with a less skilled bowler than someone impacting the pace of play. What is a realistic cut off score for someone to not impede on the enjoyment of others at major events?

It’s personal for me, as I am someone that thrives more easily with people that are throwing well. I can feed off emotions a bit better from others.

I just happened to get paired with this person in back to back tournaments in a shift, AND I followed him each time. But watching the person go up and chuck it for a 2 pin and they just walk off with a smile, for me personally it boggles my mind. But it’s such a hard thing for me to follow, personally. I refuse to say there needs to be an “Average cap” for any big cash tournament, but was just giving some perspective on other things that can be frustrating, besides slow play.

It’s a weird thing though as I talked with him and he’s an incredibly friendly person that just has a love for the game. But man, never put me on his set again haha

So long story short, I can still get some jive with someone throwing slow. But someone who is 6 games deep and is averaging 159? Eh, that’s worse in my opinion.

28

I think this is one source of conflict. Of course I’m mindful of others; that’s why I’m having this conversation. I’m going at a pace at which I believe I can best perform and that happens to be slow, at least for now. No matter how slowly or quickly everyone goes, someone has to be slowest, and sometimes that’s me.

If I’m thinking about how I’m impacting the pace of the shift, then I’m not focusing on my game, and that makes me need to let thoughts flow through me, and that makes me need to take more time, not less, in order to perform at my best and throw fewer balls and finish sooner in order to finish the shift earlier.

Yes, I can practise this. And I do. And maybe that’s the most we can do here, unless we want to add a shot clock or otherwise start assessing penalties for slow play. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be the type to grab a ball and just throw and feel confident in my shot. Even if I did, someone else would take my place as a slow player.

How do we differentiate slow play from maliciously delaying the event? Maybe we need to come up with some clearer definitions of maliciously slow play in order to resolve this issue, while we encourage slower players to practise the things that will help them go a bit less slowly.

29

I think this is a genuine solution to the problem. My partner and I were talking about this recently. Maybe we need some radical solutions, such as:

  • Qualifying School in order to get onto The Tour.
  • Progressive cuts: drop the bottom 25% of the field after 4 games, then drop the bottom 25% again after 6 games. (I chose 25% arbitrarily; I don’t know the right number.)
  • Flagging both fast and slow players and adjusting the lane draw to limit their impact. Example: fast players always go on 4-player lanes and slow players always go on 3-player lanes.

These solutions have various impacts and I’m always worried about unintended consequences, but then that’s what conversations like this are for: to explore those options and bring a variety of opinions to bear on them.

30

What else are they supposed to do? Cry? Scream? Frown enough as a performance so that we all know that they’re suitably unhappy? :wink:

Sports psychologists generally agree that smiling is probably a helpful choice in that moment, depending on the thoughts behind the smile. :person_shrugging:

Thank you for being willing to say that, because it’s problematic, but it’s honest and I respect that. I feel something similar in my work in software: sometimes I just want everyone around me to get their shit together so that we can enjoy going at full speed for a while and stretch our own skills even farther. I like teaching, but I don’t want to do it all the time.

Maybe we need more true Invitationals–like where you actually have to be invited to participate. More Tour Championship-style events where you have to qualify somehow to be part of the field. This might help folks like you who need a break from the “open to everyone” format so that they can push themselves without the distraction of the Unwashed Masses. I get it, even though that might make it harder for the unwashed masses to break through. I like having the Elite Level as a thing to aspire to.

Would you enjoy that, Erik? Might it help you better cope with following someone on their way to 1420?

31

As a faster player it doesn’t really bother me unless it’s on the border of being excessive. Not trying to sound off with this line as it’s not directed at anyone but if you’re taking between 45 seconds or more you are thinking about waaaaaaay too many things.

As I played higher level basketball, when I came back to bowling I always compared my pre shot routine to my free throw routine. In basketball you have 10 seconds to get the shot off, the main point was to calm your heart rate with some deep breathing and focus on the release of the ball.

Bowling in no different besides the fact I haven’t been running up and down to court and am out of breath. After a while the pre shot should feel like it’s on auto pilot because you’re doing the same thing Everytime…if you have a few off shots sure it’s ok to take the time and think of small things like how your fingers are positioned or focusing on your steps or how you want to follow through but if youre over analysing what you need or want to do it will affect your game negatively.

Remember less is more sometimes and your playing an imperfect game!

1 Like
32

I think this is the biggest misconception about the time I take. I’m not thinking. I’m breathing and settling. A single inhale-exhale cycle takes 12-15 seconds for me. I’m actually practising inhaling more quickly to cut 3 seconds off that time.

If I miss the time to get up on the approach, sometimes because the person next to me has a different rhythm, that can cost me 12-15 seconds. I breathe how I breathe.

I don’t know how other people experience it, but for me, it isn’t as simple as “think less”. I’m already not thinking very much.

33

I love both parts of this: I’m experimenting with noticing the parts of my routine that I don’t truly need, so I can eliminate them–or at least make them optional. I notice, for example, that I often feel ready to start even before I completely exhale, so I no longer insist on completely exhaling before I push away.

I have been tamping down the Perfectionist Voice in my head. It hasn’t disappeared, but it’s quieter and it visits me less than it did a year ago.

34

Super delayed in getting back to this, but interesting perspective for sure and I appreciate you feeling comfortable sharing and your honesty.

I’m a bit confused though: you say you vibe more easily with people who are throwing well because you feed off the emotions a bit better - which I totally get. How is someone bowling a lower average, but bringing that vibe, affecting your game? How is someone else’s low score influencing you? Is it a matter of you don’t feel the need to bring a certain intensity? I’m just confused by the sentiment. Maybe I’ve played POA with a big gap in abilities for a long time and I’m just used to gaps in scratch on the same lane haha.

35

You’re right, there will always be a slowest. But the slowest can’t be impacting the pace of play beyond a reasonable amount as determined by the tournament official.

And nobodies asking you, in tournament play, to shift your focus to your pace. We’re outside of a tournament setting and you’re acknowledging it. Great step one! Action is step two. If you’re intentionally working on getting that pace up so you’re not impeding the flow of play? That’s perfect. I don’t think anyone would expect you to show up the next tournament and be grabbing the ball and going. All progress is good progress right?

Again, I don’t think anyone’s expecting you to go from one extreme to the other, I do think there’s a happy medium. I think it’s great you’re working on it. I think it’s very self reflective you acknowledge how this impacts play for others.

(Sorry I just realized I can reply to multiple posts on one thread here)

I feel this could be difficult to do if new players are always being added. I’m also curious how long a lane draw takes now and how much longer it would take adding in intentional sorting. Is it normal to have three and four player lanes? Or is it more typical to see all lanes at four players? My concern there is you’re intentionally cutting out spots from the tournament.

36

I agree with that! Unfortunately, here’s what happens:

  1. The slowest person goes faster.
  2. The field overall goes faster.
  3. The tournament officials have a new benchmark for “reasonable”, which is faster than it used to be.
  4. There is a new slowest person, even though they go faster than the previous slowest person used to go.

Repeat forever.

I’m not saying that the alternative is “do nothing”; I’m saying that some vague intuitive notion of “fast enough” or “too slow” is likely to fail. Strangely, this is a case where inertia (the same people acting as tournament directors for years and years) and “it always used to be this way” (which many folks complain about, and rightly so) actually help us, because they dampen these effects. Without that, tournament directors would be expecting us to go faster and faster every year until nobody can go any faster. :slight_smile:

Well… at least two people have criticized me directly at tournaments. One has made fun of it while standing on the approach.

Yes, but that merely makes someone else slowest and they probably go almost as slow as I do/did. (I’m not that slow. :wink: ) I’m doing two things at once here:

  • trying to help folks understand why we slowpokes go slowly
  • wandering around looking for solutions that I can’t see

Yes. I’m just trying to be transparent myself and act as a kind of avatar for #teamslow out there, hoping that other slowpokes will join in. I’d also like to see more rabbits in this conversation.

Indeed, I’m right with you. If we expand the field, because we’re trying to guide the sport to grow, then we will have more rabbits and more turtles and the gap will grow, not shrink. This is a ticking time bomb. Impatient rabbits might start leaving and be loud and angry on the way out. Many rabbits are top players, so that means that some of those loud, angry, impatient rabbits are people we want to keep in these events. I’m not sure how many, but some.

Is it normal to have 3s together with 4s? Only in shifts that don’t sell out. Maybe if we just keep the shifts barely big enough to sell out, then that option goes away. Indeed, I’m not looking to cut spots out and I don’t really see fudging the lane draw as a viable solution, but rather I’m throwing it out there hoping that it triggers someone to have a better idea.

37

So I think where part of the translation is lost here is: slow players vs impeding the pace of play.

There’s plenty of slow bowlers who don’t impact the pace of play.

If it’s an incidence of one fast set of lanes was left waiting for 20 minutes one game? Wow, congrats to them on the great bowling!

If it’s an incidence of there is regularly one set of lanes preventing the others from moving on, every game (or the majority of games) by 15-20 minutes…I think this is the issue.

In the entire time I’ve competed here (Alberta) I’ve run into two pace of play issues caused by a player.
One legitamately had a broken arm and had a hard time getting the grip on the ball with their other hand, the other was the example I mention above. I’ve played a variety of events, both scratch and POA, and both serious and fun events. In all the events: two incidences. From a fairly large sample size I’m seeing pace of play is rarely an issue. I have very little concerns of us seeing this as a growing concern as we open up the elite playing field.

I understand why people are slow, I understand why people need to take their time (they need time to be ready) versus the players who grabs the ball and go (they need the least amount of time to think as possible). I also understand how focusing on your pace of play is going to negatively impact your game, so what can we, the non slowest, do to bridge this gap?

You’ve admitted for youself you think its a confidence issue: I get that. I have a lot of perfectionist tendencies, I have a hard time setting the bar at a realistic standard for myself. The natural ebbs and flow of the game are extremely hard for me. There’s things I cling to that make me feel safer and more secure when I am bowling. There’s times where I’m taking an extra 3-5 seconds (resetting the pins, walking the lenghth of the approach ot the pit) to get back on it. 10 or 20 seconds here? Not a big deal.

I think any coach has said the phrase “take your time, go when you’re ready, etc.” …the truth of the matter is…there could be a time where a judge of play is coming up to us telling handing us a warning for taking so long. We have to look at how we’re fostering confident and sure bowlers. So the times whne they are affecting the pace of play, it’s a one off or rare occasion, not the standard.

And for what it’s worth: I am equally as frustrated by the pace of play being impacted by a lack of pin chasers addressing tangles in a timely manner as I would be the pace of play being caused by a single player. There’s a ton of bits and pieces that keep the flow of the tournament going.

I commend you for seeking solutions. I admire that you’re exploring all possible avenues for how we make the playing field fair for players of all paces. It’s clear you’re making every attempt to be considerate of the tours and events you play at, including having conversations like this.

And maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is not a one, or two, or three player issue. But if this is a minimal player issue: how can we support them to increase their pace of play to a level that isn’t bottlenecking a tournament by hours? Not: how do we shift an enitre tournament format to meet the needs of the 1% (I don’t know what percentage it is, but it’s small, you get it).

At the end of the day, I think it’s coming down to this for me:
What’s making a bowler’s pace be so slow, they’re impeding the flow of a tournament → what support can we provide to prevent this from happening?

38

As a bowler that’s only 21 years old, and just 2 years out of YBC, I am just now starting to bowl in more and more tournaments. Having bowled at the Timmins Invitational the past 2 years, as well as Open Provincials last year for Northern Ontario, I’ve gotten to bowl with and against some incredible bowlers. Personally, I do not care about slow play, and I do not believe that “slow” players need to change their pre-shot routine or their approach to the game just to please the bowlers that spend minimal amount of time from being in the pit to releasing the ball during their delivery. There will always be some “fast” bowlers, some “slow” bowlers and the vast majority somewhere in between. The only time where this should be an issue during a tournament is if the bowling alley is expecting a big group of public bowling follow the completion of the last shift of the day. Bowlers should know that not everyone has the same style, not everyone has the same shot routine, so why should the fast bowlers expect everyone to play at the same pace. In my opinion it is unfeasible.

also, I understand I am very late at replying to this thread lol

39

I believe I understand. I mean this. If we weren’t impacting the pace of play, then there’d be no need to diagnose and fix the slow play.

That helps me to know. On the other hand, I’ve heard from at least one source that this risk is becoming a problem. It might be that that person is over-reacting; it might be that that person is merely trying to mitigate a far-off risk; it might be that some people are merely whining because some people just whine. I’m not sure. I wanted to take it seriously and that’s why I chose to start this discussion.

Indeed, it might actually be nothing. It might even just be that the rabbits are going too fast and it sucks when four rabbits are on the same pair all day and routinely finish early and have to wait.

Indeed, I find this interesting, too. Is it 1%? 5%? 20%? The strategies are different.

Also, I know from my knowledge of Theory of Constraints that always jumping to the next pair of lanes as soon as they’re open tends to worsen, not lessen, the impact of slower play; however, I have a lot of experience with people resisting this idea, no matter how much math I offer to show them. :wink: I would like to face the reality that “But this is a prison of your own making, rabbits!” is not a viable strategy, even if it’s a correct statement.

These seems to contradict your assertion that you don’t know how to start a conversation about this. :wink: