If bowling teaches you one thing, that is Humility.

Regardless of the hours you have spent learning and mastering the skills that will get you to the top and keep you there, there will always be moments when no amount of ability will keep you going. There will be opponents that will defeat you with sheer luck and no comprehension of what the sport involves and why.

It is when conditions get tough, when patterns get challenging it is the time for the unexpected outsider to ignore the pocket and get the strikes. While you struggle next to them to up your revs and manage your speed, pick a line and use the right ball, they get all kinds of strikes that lack reason or undeniable intent.

But since this is a sport of score and not of skills, since we record pinfall and not grace or technique, there are no points granted for skills, splits that should have been strikes, 10 pins that should have fallen and results that do not match the names over them.

My coach used to say "You are the winner until the next race" and that was for swimming. The only thing that can show greatness in bowling is long term results. Long as in years...

Perhaps it is the amount of luck involved that, although reduced as much as possible by play formats (dual conditions) and lane conditions (flat patterns), keeps bowling closer to a game than a sport