Duckpin bowling is a variation of the sport of
bowling
Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thou ...
.
Duckpin balls are in (12 cm) to 5 in (12.7 cm) in diameter, weigh 3 lb 6 oz (1.5 kg) to 3 lb 12 oz (1.7 kg) each, and lack finger holes. They are thus significantly smaller than those used in
ten-pin bowling
Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first rol ...
but are slightly larger and heavier than those used in
candlepin bowling
Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces and the New England region of the United States. It is played with a handheld-sized ball and tall, narrow pins that resemble candles, hence ...
.
Duckpins, though arranged in a triangle identical to that used in
ten-pin bowling
Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first rol ...
, are shorter, slightly thinner, and lighter than their ten-pin equivalents, which makes it more difficult for the smaller ball to achieve a
strike
Strike may refer to:
People
* Strike (surname)
Physical confrontation or removal
*Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm
*Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...
. For this reason, similar to candlepin bowling, the bowler is allowed three rolls per frame.
Rules
![20190510 Duckpin bowling states](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/20190510_Duckpin_bowling_states.png)
Duckpin bowling has rules
similar to ten-pin bowling. In a 10-frame game, bowlers try to knock down pins in the fewest rolls per frame. Bowlers have three balls per frame, instead of two as in ten-pin bowling, to knock over a set of 10 pins. If a bowler knocks down all 10 pins with their first roll in a frame, it is scored as a ''
strike
Strike may refer to:
People
* Strike (surname)
Physical confrontation or removal
*Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm
*Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...
''. If all the pins are knocked down in two rolls, the bowler has made a ''
spare
Spare or Spares may refer to:
Common meanings
* Spare (bowling), a term for knocking down all the pins using two bowling balls
* short for spare part
** Spare tire
A spare tire (or stepney in some countries) is an additional tire (or tyre - s ...
''. If all the pins are knocked down in three rolls, it is scored as a ''ten'', as in candlepins, with no bonus. If pins are still standing after the third ball, the bowler gets one point for each pin knocked down.
In the case of a strike, the bowler gets 10 points plus the total number of pins knocked down with the next two balls rolled, for a maximum of 30 points. In the case of a spare, the bowler gets 10 points plus the number of pins knocked down with the next ball, for a maximum of 20 points. If it takes three balls to knock down all 10 pins, the bowler gets 10 points, with no bonus. A bowler's final score is the sum of the points earned over 10 frames (a spare or strike in the tenth frame earns one or two rolls respectively). The maximum possible score of 300 points, which is accomplished by rolling 12 strikes in a row, has never been achieved under official conditions.
Duckpin bowling lanes are the same size as ten-pin bowling lanes, but with smaller gutters.
History
The origin of duckpin bowling has been disputed. A commonly recited assertion is that the sport began in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
around 1900, at a bowling, billiards and pool hall owned by future baseball Hall of Famers
John McGraw
John Joseph McGraw (April 7, 1873 – February 25, 1934) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player and manager who was for almost thirty years manager of the New York Giants. He was also the third baseman of the pennant-winning 1890 ...
and
Wilbert Robinson
Wilbert Robinson (June 29, 1864 – August 8, 1934), nicknamed "Uncle Robbie", was an American catcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). He played in MLB for the Philadelphia Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and St. Louis Cardinals ...
,
[ both of the old (1882–1899) ]Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...
.[ One such claim is reported in the ''Pittsburgh Press'' of March 3, 1929.][ Accessed through Google News website.] However, research has since found references to duckpin dating to the early 1890s in New Haven, Boston and Lowell, Mass.[ Author Howard W. Rosenberg wrote in 2005 that his research showed the sport was around "at least as of 1894, and probably well before that",][ Magazine PDF published on Venable.com.] with former ''Duckpin News'' editor Stacy Karten stating in a 2016 publication that Rosenberg found an 1892 reference to duckpin in ''The Boston Globe.''[
Duckpins was not an organized sport until the National Duckpin Bowling Congress (NDBC) was founded in 1927.]
In 1953, submarine designer Ken Sherman developed the first automatic duckpin pinsetter, its design having over 1,000 moving parts. Sherman's refusal to sell his patent to ten-pin competitor Brunswick caused him to lack corporate investment needed to manufacture large numbers of duckpin pinsetters.[ Further, no parts for the Sherman pinsetter have been manufactured since 1973,] so that anyone wanting to open a new bowling center must cannibalize parts.[ The absence of new pinsetter machines is thought to curtail growth of the sport, and spare parts must be scavenged or obtained from alleys that have closed.][ Only one company makes duckpins, and it only leases them.][
The executive director of the National Duckpin Bowling Congress said in 2016 that there were 41 congress-certified duckpin bowling alleys, down from nearly 450 in 1963.][ In comparison, there were about 4,000 ten-pin centers in 2018.][Data: ]Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
archives of USBC's bowl.com website. Links provided o
Wikimedia's image page
2019-04-03 archive thereof
''The Baltimore Sun'' reported in 2017 that the number of professional duckpin bowlers is down by more than 90 percent.
In 1982, the Women's National Duckpin Association (WNDA) was formed, conducting tournaments for women to compete professionally,[ Publication date is estimated based on earliest Wayback Machine archive.] with Ladies Professional Duckpin Tournament (LPDT) events extending back at least as early as 1974.[ Accessed in 2019; presumably page is updated annually.]
Accomplishments and record scores
In 1999, ''Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...
'' named Elizabeth "Toots" Barger among the fifty top Maryland athletes of all time, Barger having claimed thirteen NDBC No. 1 rankings for having the highest female duckpinner average. Barger won nine world championships, and, in 1961, became the second woman to be inducted into the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame.
Variants
Rubber band duckpins
In 1905 a variant called rubber band duckpins was introduced in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
area by William Wuerthele, in which the pins are circled with hard rubber bands to increase action and scoring. Wuerthele observed bowlers wasting their third ball as well as flying pins injuring pin boys, so, according to a defunct publication called ''The Ducks'', Wuerthele added the rubber band to increase scoring.
The American Duckpin Congress was formed in the 1920s to govern the game of rubber band duckpins. The organization later became the American Rubber Band Duckpin Bowling Congress in 1945 and became an affiliate of the National Duckpin Bowling Congress. The rubber band game is now almost extinct, with most of the lanes located in private clubs, though there is one alley in the U.S. still open to the public in Glassport, Pennsylvania
Glassport is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, approximately south of Pittsburgh and the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers where they form the Ohio River. Glassport lies along the east side of the ...
.
As of 2018, rubber band duckpins was mostly limited to Québec, where it is called ''petites quilles.''
There have been perfect games bowled in rubber band duckpin, including the largest duckpin prize ever won on television, C$50,000 in 1994. Since it is easier to knock down pins in rubber band duckpin, its rules are identical to those of ten-pin bowling.
Mini duckpins
In mini duckpins, the lane is shorter than a standard duckpin lane, and the width of the lane is not standard.[ While there has never been a sanctioned perfect game in regulation duckpin bowling, 300 games are said to be relatively common in mini duckpin play.][
]
Compared to ten-pin bowling
The USBC reported that there were 55,266 certified 300 games in ten-pin bowling in the 2013–2014 season alone, but there has never been a certified 300 game in duckpin bowling.[ A Connecticut man named Pete Signore Jr. came closest with a 279 game in 1992.][
]
References
* ''The Ducks Magazine'', October 1928, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
External links
National Duckpin Bowling Congress (NDBC)
* ''The Duckpin News'
National Duckpin Youth Association (NDYA)
{{Bowling
Bowling
Ten-pin bowling