The past nine months have brought about major changes in how we approach bowling across the US. The bowling community has had to adapt and develop new procedures and rules to ensure the safety of bowlers at every level from open bowling to tournament play.

Each level seems to have a different interpretation of what needs to be done to protect bowlers and to keep bowling centers open for business.

There are three key areas within each level of bowling that we can compare and contrast during this pandemic:

1. The wearing of masks
2. The number of bowlers on a lane/people in a bowling center
3. The sanitation process during bowling sessions

Open bowling

Whether it be bowling for fun or practicing for leagues and tournaments, open bowling is run by each bowling center individually, and therefore, a wide variety of rules and levels of enforcement can be seen both across state lines and within.

Looking around during open bowling you may see all faces around you covered by masks, you may see no faces covered by masks, or you may see a combination. Most bowling centers are only allowing bowlers on every other lane to space people out and some have even added partitions between lane seating.

Increased sanitation occurs between each group of bowlers.

Basically, every bowling center is taking a slightly different approach to ensuring bowler safety as well as government compliance.