Greetings, everyone! Welcome to the week 5 recap from the Tuesday Night Partytimers league at Shelby Lanes. The title says everything you need to know about last night. I threw some of my best shots of the season last night. I left 10 spares while shooting 672. One was a 8-10 split, the rest were single pin spares or easy combinations. Out of the remaining 9 spares, I missed 3 of them, and guess what? They were all 10 pins! Missed 1 in the gutter, and hooked away from the other 2, missing them by fractions of an inch. 2 of them were complete momentum killers. Missed one in the 6th frame of the first game, sandwiched in between 2 turkeys, only shot 225. The second one was in the 9th frame of the 3rd game, in between a double and another turkey, finished with 202. I easily could have shot 700 again, but threw it away with missed spares.

I used the Black Widow 3.0 solid for the first 2 games, which was unusual because there is normally too much midlane friction to use that ball by the 2nd game. Lucky for me, small moves left kept me in enough oil in the front and midlane to continue to use my favorite ball. 225 and 245 for the first 2 games.

The 3rd game was all VEBO. I threw 8 strikes, but also had 2 opens, and only managed to finish with the afore mentioned 202. If I had made that 10 pin in the 9th, it would have given us enough to win the 3rd game, also, instead we settled for 2 games and totals. That VEBO continues to amaze me with it's ability to create big angles downlane that continue to slap out the 10 pin. It might be time to squirrel away another one of those balls for a rainy day.

Back to my corner pin dilemma. I'm going back to a plastic spare ball instead of urethane, despite my assurances last week that I was sticking with urethane. I'm hoping that will at least solve the late hook misses on the 10 pin. Then I'll just have to avoid throwing it in the ditch. Hopefully.

That's it for now. As always, if you have questions or comments, reach out to me at [email protected], and I'll get right back to you. Until next time:

• Practice with purpose

• Check your grips and replace if necessary

• Visit your local pro shop for help and advice

Craig