The Importance Of Spare Shooting

bowlingball.com Staff Writer, Cortez Schenck

Published: 2/22/2022


A common misconception in bowling is that striking takes more precedence than spare shooting. One of the easiest ways to increase your bowling average and success on the lanes is to make sure you pick up your spares. I see it all the time in leagues and youth bowling. Bowlers place too much focus on finding that magical ball to make them strike more so they can win more tournaments or keep increasing their average. If bowlers took the time to spend one practice session a week on spares only, I believe they would see much more improvement.

When practicing spare shooting, the goal is to make sure you pick up your makeable spares. A makeable spare is considered anything that isn't a split. Splits are also important to practice as they can be converted at a higher rate when devoting some time to practice them, however, I would recommend putting your attention on your makeable spares before trying to practice split conversions. A helpful tip is that it's much easier to shoot your spares cross lane. Shooting your spares cross lane means you should throw your left side spares from the right and throw your right side spares from the left. For example, if I am to shoot at a four-pin, I would want to stand farther right on the approach and shoot it across the lane, this will give you some more room for error and hopefully help make spare shooting easier.

To help you get started toward your spare-shooting journey it's important to have a drill you can do. The ten-pin and the seven-pin are what bowlers struggle with the most initially, so I would start focusing on these first. Let's start with the ten-pin; to do this drill correctly, all you need to do is convert the ten-pin ten times in a row. The tricky part is that you can only hit the ten-pin by itself or hit it with the six-pin as well. Making contact with the three-pin or any other pin does not count. As soon as you miss the ten-pin, you start over.

So if you had five ten-pins in a row and then miss one, you start back at zero and try to get ten in a row again. You then move on to the next pin or spare you want to practice. Typically I practice my corner pins as I notice practicing those by itself improves my other spare shooting. I enjoy this drill because you end up shooting the pin you are going for more than you think and start to see which direction you tend to miss your spares. It's not only a spare shooting drill but a mental one too. It can get frustrating when you start over after you miss a spare.

This drill will test your mental ability on whether your frustrations affect your spare shooting. If you have too much trouble making a spare ten times in a row, feel free to lower that number (seven times in a row, etc.).

Good luck and have fun!