Week in and week out I talk about how to do this or how to do that. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place where you could get all of this training?  A place where you could be educated as a bowler. Or as a Pro shop operator learn the latest in equipment?  How about a place where you can try out your new equipment? How about being able to bowl on two different synthetic lanes surfaces? Well the time has come. A new place has been built in Michigan; Bowling IQ.

Bowling IQ is a state of the art facility located in Sterling Heights Michigan equipped with eight new synthetic bowling lanes. Four of the lanes are AMF and four are Brunswick, equipped with the latest in AMF and Brunswick Scoring systems. The Brunswick lanes are equipped with A-2 machines, and the AMF lanes are equipped with two 82-70 and two 82-90XLI machines. The lanes are separated by a glass enclosure made from the same glass used in the NHL. There is a sliding glass system used to separate the AMF from the Brunswick side. The lanes can be separated if you have more then one group to teach or easily opened up for the larger groups. The settee area has the newest in AMF and Brunswick furniture. Burgundy and sea foam green color leather furniture complete the settee. There is a 4000 sq. ft showroom which displays all the latest in bowling equipment in the industry. The showroom has an Oak, Mahogany color scheme with some “Retro” bowling looks.  Wooden benches extracted from a local bowling center that opened back in the 1930’s accent the showroom floor. The past and the present come together in Bowling IQ.

Bowling IQ has two concession areas equipped with stainless steel appliances along with granite countertops. There are two education classrooms. One classroom can seat forty students and is equipped with one 47 inch Flat screen T.V. with Laptop port connections. The other classroom can seat one hundred students and is equipped with two 47 inch Flat screen T.V. s along with Laptop port connections. They are also equipped with Zone Speakers with wireless microphone capability.  There are two separate board rooms that can seat either four or eight people. All in all a facility that is second to none in the bowling industry.

About Bowling IQ

“ Bowling IQ exists to do just that, raise your bowling IQ. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned bowler, Bowling IQ provides you with the tools for success. Our one and only goal is to insure that every person who enters our doors has a positive experience, and leaves with more knowledge than when they entered.

Versed in all available bowling equipment, our staff can provide you with expert information. We strive to insure that you fully understand the products you choose to use.

Our training staff lead by former Team USA and Gold Level Coach Sean Klug, give Bowling IQ the capacity to deliver on our promise of excellence. So whether you are a first time bowler or a seasoned veteran, Bowling IQ is your resource for bowling knowledge.”

You need to check this place out. Right now you can bowl on eight different lane conditions, one on each lane each and every Monday and Tuesday night from 8-10 p.m. $10.00 per person and that lets you bowl on any of the eight different PBA oil patterns they put out. We will also have Bowling Ball spinners at your access to fine tune your bowling equipment.

Bowling IQ is located at 7023 E. 14 Mile Rd. Sterling Heights MI 48312

Until Next week, if you need to learn anything, I can help you raise your Bowling IQ. Thomas Yeip is the Manger of GLC Bowling and the Lead Technical Advisor. He is an IBPSIA advanced certified technician. You can email your questions or comments to him directly at Thomas.yeip@glcbowling.com

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 1.6.0 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder. 

If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts.  If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, VistaDB, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started.

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Good luck and happy writing.

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Welcome to 2010 and most of you are about half way through your league season. Some of you might be bowling well this season, and some may not be. Most of you might be getting ready to start your Local City or State tournaments. So are you prepared for the tournament season? Do you think you have the right bowling balls to compete at the higher level for the tournaments? This week I would like to talk about some drilling layouts and bowling ball surfaces that you may want to have in your bag this tournament season. I will explain the different drilling techniques and surface preparations so you can better understand your equipment and have the right tools to excel on the conditions you might face.

Bowling tournaments can be a very fun time. It could also be a time where you struggle to bowl well. Having the right drilling layouts and ball surfaces will help you achieve greater success on the lanes. I am not saying that you will bowl better with the advice I give you here, remember equipment is a big factor to scoring, but it ultimately comes down to the bowler themselves. I can give you the advice, but you, the bowler, have to be able to execute your shot.

The first step I want to talk about is your bowling ball surface. You can not go into any tournament setting and have the same surfaces on every bowling ball you own and expect to have the right tools. It’s kind of like going to the golf course with a bag full of 9 irons. It’s much more difficult to make par 5’s with just 9 irons. So the first thing you should do is actually look at your equipment and have at least one bowling ball sanded to 500 grit or 1000 grit finish. These are for when you encounter a heavier oil condition. The duller the surface, the more friction you will have on those heavier oil patterns. Then next bowling ball should have anywhere from a 2000 to 4000 grit finish. These will be a little less aggressive then your lower grits, helping your bowling ball travel further on the lane surface before it begins to hook. These surfaces will be most effective on the medium oil conditions. Last, you should have at least one polished bowling ball in your bag. Having a bowling ball that is polished will have even less friction in the oil and front part of the lane surface.

Now how do you know which one of these to use? I will give you a very simple tip. Watch what your ball is doing. If your bowling ball is traveling to far down the lane then guess what, the bowling ball is telling you that for this pattern you don’t have the right ball . Go to my brother the duller surface ball. Sometimes I hear voices in my head haha. So if your bowling ball tells you to use another then now at least having these couple tips about surface will help you make the better decision.

Now on to the next part, about drilling layouts, you will need to have a couple different layouts in your bowling bag as well. The first one I would like to talk about is a drilling that will help you when you encounter heavier patterns. You should have a bowling ball in you bag that has a drilling layout where your locator pin (that’s the colored dot on the bowling ball) is placed even with or below your finger gripping holes. Having locator pins lower will help the bowling ball start to rev up faster on the lane thereby creating less length and a smoother back end reaction. If you have trouble understanding that part, let’s think of the lane conditions. If you have a heavier or longer oil pattern, the lane oil will make the bowling ball travel further down the lane. So just keeping it simple, if you use a bowling ball that is drilled to go long and you are bowling on heavier oil, which will make the ball go longer, what are your chances of having that bowling ball hit the pocket on a consistent basis? Not a good chance. You may be able to hit it a couple times, but if you miss a little bit from your target then you will not be happy. So my suggestion is to use pin down bowling ball when encountering heavier patterns.

When you encounter less oil then you would want to use drilling layouts that have the pins higher above your finger gripping holes. Having locator pins higher will create longer bowling ball motion down the lane. These will work best when you start to see your bowling ball hook to soon. Now I could get into a deeper conversation about Mass Bias or PSA placements, along with locator pin distances from you positive axis point, but that will be a very lengthy article. I will save that for another time.

So let’s recap this weeks article, You need bowling balls in your bag with different sanded or polished surfaces, and locator pins below or above your finger gripping holes to be able to attack different lane patterns. Having these tools in your bag and properly drilled will help you achieve greater success on the lane conditions of today’s sport. Remember, you have to observe and define what your bowling ball is doing on the lanes and be able to take that knowledge and turn it into something great. Until next week, have fun, bowl well, execute shots and let’s say it again: Have fun.

T.J. Yeip is the Manager of GLC Bowling and the Lead Technical Advisor. He is an IBPSIA Advanced Certified Member and former PBA member. You can email your questions to him personally at thomas.yeip@glcbowling.com

 By Tom Smallwood....Columbia 300 Staff Player, PBA Titlist

GLC’s “Out of 5 Stars” Rating…

Appeal: 4.00 Length:4.25 Back End: 4.75

All balls were equipped with Turbo Insert products including the #1 selling interchangeable thumb insert, Switch Grip. For details on their premium line of insert products and accessories, visit www.turbogrips.com

How many of you remember that famous A.I. saying about practice. Well we all need to practice. Sure, some of you are content with your bowling game just the way it is. I am not one of those people. Everyone has room for improvement. Maybe it is a release or timing issue. Maybe you got a new ball for the holidays and you need to learn what it does, or heck dare I say it, practicing your spare shooting. But what and how do you practice? This week I would like to cover a couple things to work on, and also let you know why I go out and practice. 

Well everyone has their own reasons as to why they practice. Some bowlers want to improve their consistency. Some bowlers want to practice spare shots, and some go out to practice because they need to work on one particular piece of there game. Heck here’s a novel idea; some people want to practice because they want to get better!! Anyway you slice it bowlers are not satisfied unless we are doing good. Let me tell you why I went to practice this week.  Last week I was bowling in my Tuesday All Star league. I had a relatively good look on the lanes. Let’s keep it that way. First game I came out and went strike, spares, next ten strikes and finally left a solid 8 pin for a 279. Second game got a little better started out with the first 7 seven strikes in a row, then something happened. I left 3 consecutive 7 pins and I missed them all!!! Yes, yes, all the talk about spare shooting here all these weeks and I miss the first 3 seven pins I face. Can we just say I started to become a little annoyed? Well the last game was not a good one.  I had an absolute great chance for attempting to roll an 800 series and I threw that away. I lost my focus and couldn’t get it back in the last game. I ended up missing another 7 pin attempt and finished the game with a 187. So what did I do this past week? You guessed it. I practiced for about 35 minutes at shooting nothing but 7 pins!!! This is just one of many scenarios that can happen to a bowler and what you do to correct it is up to you. So if you feel like something just isn’t right with your bowling game, you go and PRACTICE to figure it out.  

One tip when going to practice is to work on one thing that is causing an issue. As I did above, I had no issues with rolling strikes that week my issue was making 7 pins. That’s what I went out to practice. If you feel that you have some sort of timing issue, then you go out and practice on timing. One of the most important things to remember when you practice is do not look at your scores. Last time I checked, scores in practice do not count for anything. But what happens when you are having issues and you can’t seem to figure out how to correct them. That’s when you do what sports teams do, and that is go to the coach. You need to find a coach in your area that is a certified USBC coach to help you. If you are in the Detroit Metro Area then you may want to come into the new Bowling IQ training facility located inside DiLaura Brothers LLC. They have 8 brand new lanes, 4 AMF and 4 Brunswick lane surfaces. So if you bowl on either one, you can have a similar practice shot from your local bowling center.  

So let’s recap from this week, when you go out to work on your game, do not look at the score board, take time to actually think and analyze what you are there to practice on, and by all means, if you do not have a coach, then talk to your local bowling centers to find one. As always you can contact me and I can try to help you out the best that I can. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season.  I will be back next week to share some more about my bowling and help you out anyway possible.  

T.J. Yeip is the Manager of GLC Bowling and the Lead technical advisor. He is an IBPSIA Advanced Certified member. You can email your questions or comments to him at Thomas.yeip@glcbowling.com