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Show BOWLING BUGS by-MARK by-MARK FRAMES A nice team score was knocked off last week by the Art Bowling club. Wally Patrick leading- the crew with a 596, while close behind be-hind were Lukey Bird, Steve Miller, Mil-ler, Keith Weight and Clarence Olsen to give the team a 2727 series. In spite of this they dropped one game to Smitties Texaco. This 2727 series was looked on at the time as a new all time league record, rec-ord, however, a later check of the records disclosed that the Smart's Feed tribe had rolled a 2737 series previously this year. Smart's won the first half of the league play and are currently leading the second half with nine more weeks to go. Winner of the first and second half will play it off at the seasons end for the league championship. This Merchant's Mer-chant's League is a scratch league, that is, no handicap is used in scores. All the other leagues here are on a handicap basis. Getting back to Wally Patrick, have you watched that ball of his take that long sweeping curve from the foul line into the 1-3 pocket, sweeping everything before be-fore it? If not, take' a gander some Monday night. There's one thing outstanding about Wally. A few months ago, he threw a terrific back-up ball from the extreme left side of the alley. This ball was effective, but gave him hand trouble, finger soreness and - a raw thumb. So after experimenting with a few trick bores in balls which were no improvement on his hand, he had some talks with Ned Day, when Ned was conducting his clinic at the Ritz in Salt Lake City. After these talks with Ned, Wally did a complete about-face and started throwing a curve from the right side of the alley. This was indeed a tough job. Everything Every-thing now was in an exact reverse re-verse of everything' he had done before. If you don't think this was tough, try riding a bicycle backwards back-wards after you've ridden it fron-wards fron-wards for years. Wally's scores naturally went down, but he stuck to his new style, studying each throw and continually seeking improvement. im-provement. Today, Wally has come a long way toward mastry of his curve. He still has a great deal of trouble with spares, as a curve ball covering as much of the alley as his, is extremely hard to control. con-trol. But when he gets that ball "grooved" he's unbeatable. In contrast to Wally's ball is the south-paw delivery -of Keith Weight. Keith has speed and. a fast breaking hook, perhaps too much speed, but Keith is of a ! stature that deters him in slowing down, consequently his hits have a tendency to jump the front pins over those in the rear. Then there's Clarence Olsen, lead-off man on the Art Bowl squad. Clarence is strictly a straight ball artist, having the accuracy of a sharpshooter. Clarence Clar-ence delivers from the right corner cor-ner and drives directly at the pocket. He has been leading his club most of the time. Clarence comes from a family of bowlers, there is Angus Olsen bowling with Smart's Feed, Marion Mar-ion (Pete) Olsen bowling with the Humphrey Tribe and Evelyn Cham- bers, daughter of Angus, bowling with the Cleaner gals on Thursday. Thurs-day. Also two more brothers, Or-ville Or-ville and Francis bowling in the major league in Provo. Evelyn throws a back-up identical iden-tical to her dads, and believe me, she is a beautiful bowler. To prove it, she's leading the ladies with a nice 158 average. Not only is Evelyn a nice bowler to watch, she is a very charming person to konw. Now let's back-track again and see what makes some of these balls act like they do. Let's get on Wally again. Wally takes four steps, places his hand at about five o'clock on the ball, that is, his fingers are almost behind the ball with his thumb pointing slightly slight-ly to left of the front center. Just before he releases his ball, he starts his hand turning counterclockwise, counter-clockwise, which starts the ball rotating from right to left. As he delivers, he turns his hand almost al-most palm-down, at the same time lifting the right side of the ball with his fingures as his thumb disengages dis-engages itself. This effects a tremendous tre-mendous rotating motion from right to left. The ball will slide down the alley until it loses enough momentum from the rotating motion mo-tion to take hold and pull it into the pocket. It is this rotating motion mo-tion that makes this ball deadly, and is what is called "stuff" on the ball. It increases the strike potential po-tential many times, due to the angle at which it goes into the pins. To get the same angle with a straight ball, one would have to stand on the adjoining alley to the right about 20 feet from the pins instead of the 60 feet from foul line to the pins. All curve-ballers do not get their curve effect in the same manner of delivery. Most of them getting their rotating effect by the lift of the fingers without turning the hand. The action is the same. The curve ball, when it is well controlled con-trolled is a deadly ball, but accuracy ac-curacy is much harder to attain than with the straight or hook ball. The hook ball is more widely used. Well, the Utah State Tourna- ment got underway at the Regal Recreation Center in Provo Saturday Satur-day evening. Several teams, doubles and singles have been rolled roll-ed but nothing spectacular in these events has, as yet, Deen turned in. The bulk of the entries will be shooting tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, when the Salt Lakers will make their bid. Some of the Price boys showed up at our local alleys last Sunday Sun-day for a go with our boys. Three 3-game series were rolled. The local lads, Clarence Olsen, Angus Olsen, Clarence Smith and Del Humphrey taking home the bacon. There was some talk overheard at the Regal Saturday night to the effect some of Salt Lake's best, like Paul Chase, Bill Ward, Kyle Coles and others are interested in coming to Springville later to see what makes the guys here tick. What do you say, fellows? Any takers? Drop me a card at the Herald, if you're interested. So long, lads and lassies, until next week. Mark. |