One thing I am trying to accomplish in improving as a bowler, despite being only a part-time bowler for now, is to educate myself in the game more than I did when I was younger. So I am paying attention to the finer things in PBA tour telecasts, league bowlers, and my own game.
Rev rate, expressed in revolutions per minute (RPM), is one area in which I'm paying more attention to lately. Not only am I seeking my own ideal rev rate, but I am also paying attention to what rev rates are required to succeed at the highest level. Ball speed is another area I'm paying attention to.
Some sample PBA players and their ball speeds and rev rates, from the Winter 2009-10 issue of USBowler:
Rhino Page - 17/18 MPH, 310 RPM
Tom Smallwood - 15 MPH, 350 RPM
Bill O'Neill - 17/18 MPH, 450 RPM
Wes Malott - 18/19 MPH (but looks like he's hardly trying; he's one strong dude), 400+ RPM
These were general estimated averages, which is about all I can come up with for myself without some high tech equipment. In a meeting at work this week, I scribbled out some estimates. (Don't worry; it was a meeting I was required to be in, but in which different groups reported on their status. My part lasted five minutes.) It's a good thing I remembered my algebra. I guess my teachers were right when they said some day I might use this stuff at work.
To figure out my RPM I need to use what little info there was available to me. The bowling center has a feature in which your ball speed is calculated. My shots averaged 15.5 to 17.5 MPH. Part of the wide range is because of my own inconsistency, but much of it is also in experimenting with the lanes and shot as I try to find the optimal way to the 1-3 pocket. My average and ideal speed did indeed seem to be right about in the middle at about 16.5 MPH.
So as with my golf game, my ball speed is not among the big boys, but somewhere in the mix of the elite. That's encouraging.
Back to RPM. My best guess as to how many revolutions my ball performs before hitting the pins is 12-13. With that knowledge, and my ball speed, I can figure out rev rate.
Thus rev rate = revolutions per minute
= revolutions per mile x speed in miles per hour / 60 (to convert hours to minutes)
= 5280(feet in a mile)/60(feet in lane length) x 13 revs x 16.5 / 60
= 314.6 RPM
Plugging in different numbers to cover the range of ball speed (15.5 to 17.5) and revs (12 to 13) give me a possible range of 272.8 to 333.7.
This has PBA potential, but it probably wouldn't hurt to up the rev rate another 25 or so RPM. Typically, the only lower-rev players who've made it big on tour are lefties, like Rhino Page. (Why that is the case for lefties can mushroom into sometimes heated discussions.)
The most successful PBA player in history is the right-handed Walter Ray Williams, Jr., whose rev rate is around 300 RPM (my best guess). But Walter is the exception that proves the rule. They call him "Dead Eye" on tour, because of how ridiculously accurate he is. Nelson Burton, Jr. used to always say direction is 95% of the game, and Walter's success seems to back that up.
How accurate is he? Consider this: Williams is a six-time world horseshoe pitching champion.
Elf
2 weeks ago
16 comments:
Good luck on your quest to improve your game! I've been wanting lately to try and build something more technically sound that is a bit like a set of drop down boxes that can give you directionally accurate criteria for what the ideal ways to manage ball speed, rev rates, ball choice, area of lane play based off the type of surface is. but unfortunately my knowledge base is not as high as the experts. I feel pretty knowledgeable, but nothing compared to the real pros. maybe i'll start to piece something together, who knows.
Do you think I have a chance being I'm a straight ball thrower?
We should bowl sometime. I'd like to take a lesson of how to get a curve going.
a chance at what? i'd be happy to help teach you to curve the ball, but i live in illinois.
@earias: Thanks, I'd be interested to hear your progress. As for me, real progress probably won't be made until I bowl more than every-other week. Probably not until next season. Plus, I need to recognize lanes patterns and changes more quickly, which hopefully will come.
@mac: By "a chance," I assume you mean "be successful," and the short answer, without knowing how you presently score, is "probably not." Generally, the more angel at which you can hit the pocket, the better "carry" you will get. But with today's equipment, if you wanted to invest just a little money and time, you could learn to throw enough hook to break 200 fairly regularly.
Where you go from there will depend on how "hooked" you get on your newfound success.
PS Mac, yes, let's get together with the women for some beers and bowling, and maybe one of my bowling balls will fit well enough for you to try so you can see what I mean.
feel free to throw some youtube of yourself up as well so we can see your form and make recommendations! either that or make a trip to the chi. :D
can you do me a favor and go vote for this guy named kevin reuer on this website? click the viper pattern. http://bowl.com/sportbowling/poll/
tell all your friends too!!!
Of course the cheapest way to accurately gauge ball speed, rev rate AND lane characteristics is to set a half-decent camera (mpeg compatible) on the floor to your side, pointing down the lane. Use a ball with a bold color pattern - one half black and one-half white would be ideal - and place a stopwatch on the floor inside the frame of the video. After a few throws, check out the video frame-by-frame and count up the revs while checking the clock.
NOW...as a fairly-competant physicist, I'd like to offer a few more subtleties of the process, if you're willing to listen and all. I really would. ::: apologies to J.D. Salinger :::
A typical curve ball STARTS OUT rotating about an axis that passes thru the center of the ball and a point roughly midway between the three holes. The ball is not rolling forward, it's spinning counter-clockwise and SLIDING forward. A nice 16 pound ball (like the ones at my old stomping grounds, Rose Bowl on Snelling) makes a damn fine gyroscope, which will resist ANY attempts to change the direction of that rotational axis, but gradually the floor friction takes over and the rotation turns into a ROLLING FORWARD action, at least to a degree. When you see the ball stop curving and straighten out (although angling 11 o'clock or so at this point), you know you're completely rolling FORWARD. Strong bowlers (like good old Earl Anthony) will keep a ball curving until it's rolling straight left (given a lane the size of a football field), but a weaker throw will eventually 'straighten out at some angle' (sorry). The 'amount' of hook all becomes a calculus integral at that point (actually a differential equation, if you want to get down to 6-digit accuracy), but fortunately your brain already instinctively knows how to run this calculation on it's own.
Whew!
Let's take a break, and I'll fill you in on a fun fact: I used to know this guy whose dad threw a strike the very first time. By accidentally hopping the ball over the divider into the next lane ! Oops !!
Let's say on lane 13 you let loose at the right edge, your ball spins counter-clockwise 15 times down the lane but in a completely straight line. (It'll never happen in real life, but if it does, get your money back from old Vivian at the counter, because the maintenance guy has gone grease-happy). The 'coefficient of friction' in this case is zero.
You switch to lane 16, order a few beers from 'Popeye' at the bar, start the videocam and throw down the right edge until you really hammer home a good one. The right-to-left hook distance you want is (you'd know better than I) twenty inches? Write down the time it took for the ball to hit the mark. Write down the number of counter-clockwise revs you see in the video. Classical physics tells us that:
Left-to-Right-Travel = 0.5 * Left-to-Right-Acceleration * (Time^2)
or
(20")*(2)/(Time^2) = Left-to-Right-Acceleration
Stay with me, I'm almost there.
LTR-Acceleration also equals Coefficient-of-Friction * Counter-Clockwise-Spin-Rate, which equals C-O-F * (Counterclockwise Revolutions)/(Time).
Rearrange, and get:
Coefficient-of-Friction for Lane 16 = (2*20")/(Time*Counterclockwise Revolutions).
This final equation will give you a 'friction reading' of each and every lane in the damn alley.
LD ;)
New Ross
County Wexford
Ireland
Anonymous, I will try to digest your post, but first I must know: If you are in Ireland, how is it that your old stomping grounds are the same as mine? Rose Bowl was my home house in the early eighties, and it was my first real job (as a pin chaser). It closed in 1986, but I still have the ocasional dream that it is open and I'm bowling there.
GET OUT !!! I used to be a pin chaser there.
::: clears throat :::
better watch it, kid
Wow, did you ever play me there! It took me a while to put two and two together, but then I'm not the physics major. (I could have been, had you tapped and coughed at the right times in Algebra). Good to hear from you old friend. Ireland, huh? We have been trying to plan a links golf trip to Ireland for this Summer (I believe you are reasonably close to Rosslare, one of our possible spots, with a timeshare I've looked into not far). If funds allow, we're doing it. Send me an e-mail; keep in touch!
P.s. to "Anonygus." I also just figured out that guy's dad was my dad. I had totally forgotten that story!
Yeah !! You look good, buddy. 5 kids! That's gotta be fun. Me mum was just reminiscing about Laurie coming over to borrow the spatula every time she locked her keys in the house...popped open a window or something.
Actually New Ross IS Rosslare. I'm here working for another two weeks, then I'll be home to Lauderdale. Couldn't resist horsing around with you a little.
The round-trip airfare is pretty reasonable - $750 on 2 weeks notice. If you make the trip, GET A CAB FROM DUBLIN TO YOUR DESTINATION (2 hrs to NR), and have the rental co. deliver a car to your timeshare. You won't be thinking straight after 12 hrs of traveling, and the driving here is tricky. Left hand stick shift/wrong side of the road/few road signs. Also they put vinegar on french fries.
What's the golf course around here? I'm thinking about trying it this wknd.
Thanks! Rosslare: http://www.rosslaregolf.com. The Wexford Club is nice I hear, as is the New Ross Golf Club, but I'm looking to take a seaside links course trip exclusively. True links golf may not be for everyone, though, especially on windy days, which I gather is all of them. But I enjoy getting beat up on the course.
Loved the physics lesson, once I got down to paying full attention to it. The "rolling forward" action you refer to is what bowlers call "rolling out." When the reactive revolution began in 1992, roll-out became a problem for those who threw a lot of hook. Eventually, more technological advances have negated the effect, at least for the "stronger" bowlers. I personally prefer the ball to not quite fully roll out by the time it hits the pocket.
Oh, and Walter Ray was a physics major, too, and credits that for much of his success. But he wasn't much of a "nut hunt" player I hear.
Hi to Mum, Dad, and Anne; hope all is well!
whoops, I mean Lori not Laurie
::: laughs out loud :::
puts a new spin on old Mac Noland's question !!!!
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