Wieczorek's Freestyle Drilling Wins Converts - bowling technique created by Tim Wieczorek - Brief Article

Bowling Digest, August, 2001 by Larry Paladino

YOU'VE HEARD OF freestyle swimming, skiing, and even snowboarding, but how about freestyle bowling ball drilling?

Probably not. But pro shop owner Tim Wieczorek of Troy, Mich., is working to patent what he calls his "freestyle" drilling method. It is something that nobody in the country does except him, he says, and it has meant swelling averages for his customers.

"The ball rests all along your hand," Wieczorek says. "It's not like palming the ball, but awfully close. It rests on every portion of the hand and feels a lot less heavy. You don't notice the difference until you get into your backswing. It allows you to rest your hand, rest your arm, rest everything."

Mark Martin, the executive director of the Greater Detroit Bowling Association--the nation's largest local association--is one of the believers. "I had a ball plugged and he drilled it up for me. It felt very comfortable. I did find the track on my ball is different. It's higher than it was with my other grip, and that's good. My hand lays flatter on the ball."

Martin wrote about freestyle drilling in the local Oakland Press. Wieczorek says he's also gotten favorable reviews from Dan Ottman, Pro Bowler's Association central region director; Observer & Eccentric bowling columnist Al Harrison; and Al Bielawski, director of the Mid States Masters Bowling Association, who mentioned it in his tournament press release.

"Eventually I want to teach other drillers how to do it," the 38-year-old Wieczorek says. Wieczorek started drilling balls when he was 18, joined the PBA in 1989 and bowled in a number of regional tournaments, and harbored interest in succeeding as a PBA tour bowler. But one day on the job as a tool grinder in January 1993 he suffered an aneurysm. While Wieczorek survived that scary incident, which involved a swelling of an artery caused by pressure of the blood due to disease or a congenital problem, any ambitions to join the tour had to be abandoned.

Instead, Wieczorek concentrated on his pro shop work at several locations before landing at Troy's K.B.'s Rack Attack Pro Shop at the 46-lane Thunderbird Lanes and the nearby 40-lane Troy Lanes.

"The freestyle grip is obviously new, but it is something I've been playing with since I started drilling balls," Wieczorek says. "When I became a PBA member, my grip just wasn't comfortable. It felt like slop. Finally I got it to the point where it was comfortable and the ball didn't move in my hand."

Wieczorek says that one 75-year-old bowler had him drill 40 balls less than a month after shooting a 790 series after first using Wieczorek's freestyle ball. "I drilled one for my son Brian, who's 12, and almost right away he threw the first nine balls for strikes in a game," Wieczorek says. "His average has jumped from 150 to 170."

Other success stories Wieczorek cites include a woman who shot a 300 game the first time she used her newly drilled ball; a man who got a ball drilled on Saturday, then won his first ever Mid States tourney the next day; a 77-year-old man who never shot a perfect game until getting one within a week of a freestyle ball drilling; a 14-year-old boy who shot a 300; and Wieczorek's daughter, Nichole, who at age 8 averages 120.

Wieczorek says he drills 25 balls a week, with newly hired Steve Bly helping him by plugging balls and doing other work in the pro shops. Meanwhile, Wieczorek says he will be putting on his fourth annual coaching clinic, in October at Thunderbird, with the GDBA as co-sponsor for the first time. Coaches will come from as far away as Louisiana, he says.

E-mail Wieczorek at kbsrackattack@earthlink.net for more information on freestyle drilling, or log on to www.home.earthlink.net/~kbsr ackattack.