Baton Rouge Breakdown

The trip to Baton Rouge a month ago for the USBC Open Championship couldn't have gone much worse, and yet I see nothing but silver linings.

For the tournament, I averaged 60 pins below my league average.  That's ten pins per game worse than I did last year, except last year my average was ten pins higher. (So it's really 20 pins worse per game.)

For the second year in a row, I had thumb swelling issues.  You'd think I would have learned to get the balls re-drilled to be large enough in the thumb holes to avoid this.

Don't get me wrong; I doubt I would have done well regardless.  The thumb hole wasn't sticking for the entire 90 frames, although it sure felt like it in afterthought. And my spare ball wasn't quite as bad, yet I couldn't pick up spares to save my life.

But it wasn't just the bowling that went wrong.  From having to wait around several hours after the flight landed due to some communication mix-ups, to United Airlines losing two of my bowling balls on the return flight (I got them back eventually), it was a comedy of errors. "Comedy" is a good word for it, too, as I am able to have a laugh at it all now, and I even managed to laugh at it while it was all happening.

So I'm looking forward to the things I need to work on already, beyond equipment issues. And I'm looking forward to redemption in Reno next year.

If any team will have me after this year's debacle, that is.