The More I Played Bowling, the Worse I Got

The first time I played bowling, I scored 170.

That was a mistake.

Not the score.

The confidence it gave me.

I remember looking at the result and thinking that I had apparently discovered one of my hidden talents.

Bowling had been waiting for me all these years.

I had simply failed to notice.

If I could score 170 on my first attempt, then the future seemed obvious.

Play a few more times.

Learn the small details.

Get used to the ball.

Improve the technique.

Two hundred would come naturally.

Then maybe three hundred.

How difficult could it be?

This is the dangerous thing about doing well at something the first time.

You have no idea whether you were good.

You only know that the result was good.

Those are not the same thing.

Sometimes the first result is skill.

Sometimes it is luck.

Sometimes it is the complete absence of bad habits.

And sometimes the universe simply decides to give you a misleading introduction.

Bowling gave me a very misleading introduction.

I kept playing.

Naturally, I expected to improve.

Instead, I got worse.

Not slightly worse.

Properly worse.

The game that had allowed me to score 170 on my first try eventually turned into a game where crossing 100 became a challenge.

This was not how learning was supposed to work.

At least not according to the model in my head.

The model was simple:

First attempt: bad.

Second attempt: slightly less bad.

Practice.

Improvement.

More practice.

Competence.

Eventually, mastery.

A nice upward line.

Bowling refused to cooperate.

My line appeared to be going in the wrong direction.

The more I played, the less talented I seemed.

At first, I tried to explain it away.

Bad ball.

Bad lane.

Bad luck.

Wrong shoes.

Too much spin.

Not enough spin.

Maybe I was throwing too hard.

Maybe not hard enough.

Maybe I needed to aim differently.

Once you start thinking about technique, even a simple movement becomes surprisingly difficult.

Walk.

Swing.

Release.

Do not cross the line.

Do not think too much.

Of course, the instruction “do not think too much” immediately makes you think too much.

The first time I played, I probably had no technique to protect.

No expectations.

No theory.

I picked up the ball and threw it.

The pins fell.

Excellent.

Then I started learning.

That is when things became complicated.

Now every throw had a history.

The previous ball had gone left.

Correct to the right.

Too much.

Now correct again.

The wrist feels strange.

The steps feel wrong.

Why did that ball do that?

Why is one pin still standing?

Why is it always that pin?

A beginner can perform an action.

Someone who has begun thinking about the action can accidentally create twelve separate problems inside it.

This happens in many things.

At first, ignorance can feel strangely free.

You do not know enough to be nervous.

You do not know what can go wrong.

You have not developed expectations.

Then one good result gives you a target.

Now every attempt is compared with that target.

My problem was not merely that I was scoring below 170.

The problem was that 170 had become evidence.

I had done it once.

Therefore I should be able to do it again.

That is an annoying kind of logic.

One exceptional result can become a permanent accusation.

You did this before.

What happened?

Maybe nothing happened.

Maybe the first result was exceptional.

But the mind prefers another explanation.

I am getting worse.

This game hates me.

Years ago, I called bowling an ungrateful sport.

That still makes me laugh.

I had gone from wondering why I had not discovered the sport earlier to wondering why I was still playing it.

The relationship deteriorated quickly.

First meeting:

Where have you been all my life?

A little later:

I hate you.

There is probably a lesson in that.

We often judge whether we are good at something far too early.

One success can make us overconfident.

One failure can make us quit.

Neither tells the whole story.

Real ability usually appears after enough repetitions for luck to become less important.

That is much less exciting.

Nobody wants to hear:

“Try this fifty times and then we can begin discussing whether you are any good.”

We prefer immediate identity.

I am naturally good at this.

I am terrible at this.

The first version feels wonderful.

The second gives us permission to stop.

Both are convenient.

Learning is less convenient because it can make you worse before it makes you better.

The moment you begin correcting technique, your old automatic movement disappears.

Now you are conscious of everything.

You interfere with yourself.

It feels like regression.

Sometimes it is regression.

But sometimes it is the awkward middle between doing something accidentally and doing it deliberately.

I cannot claim that this was definitely what happened with my bowling.

Perhaps I simply had beginner’s luck and then revealed my true level.

That explanation is also possible.

Probably more possible than I wanted to admit at the time.

But that is what made the first score so funny.

A 170 was enough to create a completely fictional future version of me.

A few more games and I would be comfortably above 200.

Eventually 300.

The confidence was magnificent.

The evidence supporting it consisted of exactly one evening.

Human beings do this constantly.

One good exam.

One profitable trade.

One successful presentation.

One date that goes well.

One program that works immediately.

One lucky bowling game.

Suddenly we see a pattern.

The pattern may not exist yet.

We are very good at turning small amounts of information into large predictions.

Then reality arrives with a larger sample size.

That can be unpleasant.

Bowling provided my larger sample size.

And the sample size was not kind.

I had started by thinking that bowling might be the sport of my life.

A few games later, I could not reliably score 100.

There is something almost elegant about that decline.

If I had scored 60 on my first game and gradually reached 100, I would probably have been pleased.

Progress.

Instead I started at 170.

The same score of 100 now looked like failure.

Nothing about the number itself had changed.

Only the reference point.

This is another trap.

Satisfaction depends surprisingly little on the absolute result.

It depends on what we expected.

A result can be excellent if you expected less.

The same result can feel terrible if you expected more.

The first bowling game gave me the wrong expectation.

Everything afterward was forced to compete with it.

Maybe that is why beginner’s luck is not always luck.

Sometimes it is a curse.

It gives you the reward before you have earned the skill.

Then you spend the next several attempts wondering where your talent went.

Mine apparently disappeared somewhere between 170 and 100.

I kept expecting it to come back.

The pins were less optimistic.