Which is better, throwing strikes or picking up spares?

I know that it is always nice to throw a strike but what spares?

One other thing, i know that it is nice to have good ball speed, but is there a good way to match ball speed with ball rotation while trying to pick up ball speed? Some people may have told me that you need more ball speed but when i do i end up skidding in the back end and don't know how to match the two things up.

This answer is obviously spares! For two major reasons:

1. Even with a house shot where EVERYONE is striking, you still have to make the few spares you leave. Those who don't are the ones scratching their heads when they miss high series/avg by a couple of pins (or even 10ths of a pin!). Ron is right on: Take what you miss now, add 10 for each one you should have made, and see how much higher your series ends up.

Along with this, learning how to go STRAIGHT at your spares is vitally important, which I will talk about in my next point...

2. When the condition is not "walled" to where you can hit the pocket all day, you MUST make your spares to stay in competition. To wit:

- Throwing 2 strikes in a row along with all 9/ gives you a 219 game. Clearly you can see the advantage making spares gives you.
-You can almost shoot 200 with only 1 strike, provided you make all your spares!
-When you are having a good game, making those spares will only increase your standing in these tournaments.

There are many systems out there to make a spare, but one thing is paramount: the LESS boards your ball has to cover the MORE accurate your spare game will be. Of course, this applies to single wood or double wood that is a rail shot (i.e. a 2-4 leave). This is harder with multiple pin spare leaves. The moral of the story is you need ZERO boards of hook to knock 1 pin over!

So that's my take. Especially for you newer people to the game of bowling, learn how to get your spares FIRST, THEN worry about throwing a hook. By the time you get the hook thing figured out, you will then have the spare game to match, and your scores will improve.

Answer? Spares hands down. any one can strike all day long on a pattern that will allow it but you think what are you going to do when you come to a condition that doesn't give you awesome carry or is hard to find the pocket? If you cant spare your screwed basically. always work on your spares, no matter how good you think you are at them.

I was always worried about strikes when I was younger than my coach informed me that spares were better. He told me how I can end up with 200's all the time or at least close to them if I pick up spares. I have about 200 avg now and its all due to spares.

Make your spares and the strikes will take care of themselves..... Rule 1 Strikes are for show, spares are for dough. Never forget that.

Spares are most important because every time you miss one it cost you 10 pins. Even on the Pro Tour where the scores are really high many matches are lost because of a missed spare. The pros make sure they are good at spares and some of the best ones can go 100 games without missing one.

Now obviously you have to be a pretty good player to be a good spare maker and if you are good you leave yourself fewer hard spares to make.

My son just started bowling and he likes to practice. We play a game where we alternate picking either the 7 or 10 pin on the first ball, then try to convert the "other spare". There are two winner scores: First one is the lower number on first ball; second one is high score on both balls. This makes practice fun and gives us chance to pick up different spares as well. After a few games we then go back to regular practice mode. Flip flop ways to practice makes it more fun for us and we always look forward to going bowling, especially when it rains for 23+ days!!!

To me, making spares is very very important. One particular game i remember is where a bowler started with 5Xs (6 total) and ended with 187, losing to a rack of less Xs and more /s.

Just like in golf (learning backward) where the short game is to be learned and executed well before trying to smash that long drive, i think that (learned and) knowing you're capable of making most of the spares will give you confidence and produce better scores in the long run.

So keep the spares coming!

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