I golf regularly and am decent, not great. Tho my scores are generally within a certain range, on any given day, I don’t know if I’ll play great or horribly. On any individual shot, I don’t know if I’ll hit an amazing shot, or a shot so horribly bad. (Most shots are just predictably decent.) The unpredictable variability is kinda amazing.
I’m sure examples are legion, but I’m having difficulty coming up with them. The best I’ve come up with was if a bowler, instead of hitting the head pin, rolled a gutter ball.
So in what other activities - in sport or elsewhere - do you not know if you will do great or terribly as I describe happens in golf?
It’s surprising how much bowling and golf have in common despite being so immensely different.
When I bowled in a league, my best game could be 2x the score of my worst game, on the same night! That’s not happening with golf, though I am an incorrigible cheater at golf. Seriously, I didn’t pay good money to hack away at a bush with my pitching wedge.
Another sport / game with high variability is darts. I’m all over the place, sometimes I’m hitting my target, sometimes I can’t hit it for the life of me.
In all 3 - golf/bowing/darts - no opponent is actively defending you.
I haven’t bowled in some time, tho I used to average in the 130-150 range. Your scores seriously varied that much? Perhaps I do not recall.
But even in your bad rounds, are you rolling first ball gutters? Because that is the equivalent of my tee shot on 3 last Sunday. In bowling, the score depends on whether you mark or not in most frames. Which can just mean hitting the wrong side of the specific pin you are aiming at. I’m willing to be persuaded that rolling 1 pin off is as extreme as completely shitting the bed on various golf shots.
Darts is a sorta weird one, because success - say doubling in/out or not - may be the difference of a width of a wire.
But yeah - like I said - I suspect a lot of sports vary like golf, and my perception simply reflects that golf is the recreation I enjoy.
I also play a lot of music. Sure, some days I’ll really be on, and others it doesn’t seem to work. But the range of variability doesn’t impress me as wide as in golf.
I averaged around 150, but I’d occasionally throw something like a 220, and occasionally a 110. Bowling has the complication of compounding the value of strikes, if you counted just the number of pins knocked down the variance wouldn’t be so high.
Yeah - I tried to acknowledge that - poorly. I can still remember one crazy week as a high schooler at a golf camp in Iowa. We bowled each night at the college union, and I rolled several games over 200. Never approached that level again.
Bowling is weird, tho, the difference of inches that can result in a strike or a horrible split.
I’ve had some curling games where I was making (almost) every shot, but they’re few. I don’t know if they’re far between, though; seem to come in streaks.
It’s great when playing skip, to make the shots that save ends and score points.
I played cricket on Saturday. Bowlers rotate and it came round to me. I bowl spin, which ideally should break away from the batter after bouncing.
First ball - huge turn, leaves the batter wafting at empty air. Clearly, this is going to be a good day.
Second ball - I get enough revs on it that it dips hugely in flight, drops under his shot and take the wicket. New batter comes in. I am feeling very good about this, could be about to turn the match round.
Third, fourth, sixth and seventh ball - absolute dreck that neither turns nor dips, just bounces up nicely for the batter to smack around for about a billion runs. I am promptly retired from bowling duties and languish in obscurity for the rest of the match. This absolutely the correct captaincy decision, I went from great to appalling in the space of two balls.
And just to clarify - I’m not so much talking about days that I am “in the groove” and shoot a great overall score. Even on days that I’m playing well, there will be at least a shot or 2 that is just so horribly bad, I can hardly believe I hit it that poorly. Say I’m consistently hitting my drives 200 yards and pretty straight, and then I bounce one no more than 80 yards. Or yank it way left or right into the trees. And I’m not playing on a fine knife edge. I’m generally just aiming for average-good, just advancing th eball in the general direction of the hole, while avoiding the worst possible outcome on each shot.
In golf, it can be crazy. One day you might feel you played like crap, and score essentially the same - or even better - than on a day you felt really dialed in.