Whether you are a beginner, an intermediate, or a professional bowler, you must be curious as to whether your average bowling scores are good enough to be in your league. Bowling is quite a difficult art to master.
Therefore, your question of “What is a Good Score in Bowling?” is perfectly valid. In addition, I am here to answer it for you.
A typical beginner score at first is around 50-70 and a good leisure bowler’s average is normally in the 130s-150s. A good bowler usually gets around 200 in a single game. A winner in a professional bowling game/tournament usually gets between 260 and 280.
In this article, I am going to talk about the maximum score in bowling, the average scores for professionals and experienced league players as well as for beginners. I am also going to tell you what the ideal score for your skill level is. So, sit back, relax, and read this article until the end.
Bowling Scores
If you are not familiar with how scoring works in bowling, there are 10 frames with two shots each in a game of ten-pin bowling. Each player needs to knock down the 10 pins at the end of the lane to get 10 points. You can score a strike, spare, split, open-frame, and turkey.
Check out this article: What is a turkey in bowling?
Different outcomes and scores depend upon the skill level of a bowler. Let us look at some of the final scores that can be and have been scored by bowlers around the world.
Average Bowling Score for Beginners
For beginners, the case is completely different. If you have recently developed an interest in spinning and swinging the bowling ball to knock the pins, and you do not have much knowledge, do not worry, the average score is not too high and even if you score lower, the only way from here is up.
From the numbers that I found of bowling scores by players with beginner skill levels, the average scoring rate is around 50-70. This is when you have little to no knowledge of the sport and all you know is about rolling the ball and knocking the pins. Keep practicing and you will get better.
To get a good score, you need the proper equipment. Here you can find “Must Have” bowling equipment: Best Bowling Accessories.
Average Bowling Score for Professionals
If you were a professional who has been around the block in different leagues and professional tournaments, you would surely be interested in knowing the average score for experienced players in bowling.
Well, in most professional leagues and tournaments, the average score of experienced professional bowlers has been recorded between 220 and 270, which is incredibly high because you would have to bowl multitudes of strikes to achieve this score consistently.
Check this out: A Strike in Bowling – Did you know all this?
Perfect Game
A perfect game of bowling is when a bowler scores nine consecutive strikes and scores three more in the 10th frame. The total score in a perfect game is 300, which is the maximum score you can record in a game of ten-pin bowling.
Want to learn more? Check out our article: Why 300 is a Perfect Score in Bowling
Bowling a perfect game is incredibly difficult. Only a handful of professionals can do so. There are very few records of perfect games being bowled in professional leagues even, with the best quality bowlers in the world. Therefore, ideally what your final aim in bowling should be is a perfect game.
Check out these best-selling bowling balls.
Good Bowling Score
So, finally what truly is a good score in ten-pin bowling? The answer to that is simple. It depends upon your skill level. You cannot expect to hit a perfect game when you have just started.
So, what would be a good score for a beginning bowler? As a beginner, I would say a good score or what you should be aiming for is, around 70-100. Keep practicing and learning about the craft of bowling and you will keep getting better.
If you’ve been playing for a while and you consider yourself an intermediate player, you should try getting more than 150 in a game, which although is difficult, is still quite achievable if you try hard enough.
Finally, if you are a professional, your main goal should be getting a perfect game every time, however, a good average bowling score would be between 230 and 270 and you should be targeting this score.
Conclusion
Scores in bowling vary according to how proficient you are at the game. Scoring low is nothing to be sad about, instead, you should let the failure motivate you to learn more and understand the art of bowling so you can enhance your skills and become a pro. I hope you learned a lot from this piece and will focus on having a great time when you are in the bowling alley again.
Fun fact: Balmoral Software has calculated (statistically) that the most common score out of all the possibilities scores in a bowling game is 77.
