Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Born to Bowl’ on HBO Max, a Charming And Slick Look Inside the Less Than Glamorous World of Professional Bowling

We love to learn about a less-covered sport through a documentary, don’t we, folks? Well, grab your balls: Born To Bowl is HBO’s attempt to bring professional bowling out of the shadows and into the spotlight. An A24 production from by filmmakers James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, this is a slick look at a sport when the only polish is on the lanes.

BORN TO BOWL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: An elegant montage of some of the world’s most refined sporting events – Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby, F1… then a smash cut to the world of professional bowling, portrayed as a decidedly-not-refined alternative to the pinky-out-sipping-tea set. Bowling’s introduced as the sport of the Everyman – Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, The Dude. (And, of course, bowler Pete Weber, he of the famous “who do you think you are? I am!” celebration.)

The Gist: Born to Bowl follows a familiar format in sports documentaries of late, selecting a small handful of representative performers near the top of their sport and following them both inside and out of competition. Here, that’s professional bowlers Kyle Troup, Anthony Simonsen, EJ Tackett, Cameron Crowe, and Jason Belmonte, all competitors on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tour. It’s a four-month season featuring 19 tournaments and five major tournaments, with prizes that could be life-changing for these everyman athletes. HBO’s pulled in a favorite narrator here, bringing Liev Schreiber over from the Hard Knocks studio to supply an extra dose of gravitas.

Photo: HBO Max

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s impossible to review any serial sports documentary these days without making mention of Drive to Survive, the wildly-successful Netflix show that opened F1 racing to a broader American market. Pick a few key figures, follow them through an event as it happens, turn relative unknowns into household names… and yeah, that’s kinda the play here. We follow a handful of the sport’s best as they compete, but this isn’t exactly LeClerc and Hamilton, when the first bowler we meet talks about his experience managing a Wendy’s. (In that sense, it reminds me a lot more of Netflix’s Wrestlers, with its decidedly more blue-collar focus.)

Our Take: I feel like I haven’t written a review of a sports documentary in the past three years without making at least some mention of Drive to Survive, but there’s no question that the Netflix documentary has inspired a raft of “let’s make this fringe sport bigtime” pretenders. Some have worked; many have not. Of course, there’s only so many competitions that can offer the glitz, glamour and sheer power of F1 racing, and if you don’t have that, what do you do?

You succeed on charm — and Born to Bowl has charm to spare.

There’s no apologies made here; right off the bat, we’re reminded that pro bowling is the sport of beer-drinking everyman figures. The competitors we’re introduced to seem like really regular guys, the kind you could grab a beer at the lanes with–except for the fact they’d absolutely smoke you in a game. 

I’ve come to expect high quality from HBO sports documentaries. They tend to have a higher hit rate than the other streaming services, and they’ve met my expectations here: this is a tightly-crafted, professionally-made documentary, right down to the sonorous voice of narrator Liev Schreiber. It held my interest from the start, and got me actually caring about a sport I’ve never watched beyond a few minutes of late-night channel surfing. That’s no small task in a flooded marketplace, but Born to Bowl rises above the ample competition.

Photo: HBO

Performance Worth Watching: The first competitor we meet is an obvious charmer – Kyle Troup, a likable fellow with a Bob Ross-style head of hair and a family history on the lanes. He’s the defending champion as they head into the US Open championship in Indianapolis, and he’s been raised from a young age to meet this moment. As the son of former top professional bowler Guppy Troup, you could quite literally say that he’s Born to Bowl.

Sex And Skin: Bowling’s sexiest when something’s left to the imagination, isn’t it? (No. There’s no sex in the bowling documentary. There’s bowling in the bowling documentary.)

Parting Shot: Top competitor and defending champion Troup fails to make the cut by only two pins at the US Open, and laments the missed opportunity. “I probably could’ve got two pins somewhere… you can always find two pins somewhere, after 24 games.” It’s a poignant moment, as he hugs his young daughter and prepares to head home unexpectedly early. This might not be the most glamorous sport, but there’s still winners and losers, and the closer you are to the top, the more it hurts not to make it.

Sleeper Star: He’s not one of the top-billed athletes in the documentary, but Crowe’s tour roommate Keven Williams steals a few scenes late in the first episode with his rapping, wisecracking and his (maybe?) tongue-in-cheek advocacy for BlueChew gas station male enhancement pills as a tour sponsor. “It would be a hit in the bowling community! It’s a bunch of old grumpy men who might need a little power-up!”

This, this is the kind of athlete we want to see in a pro bowling documentary. 

Most Pilot-y Line: “The pins never move… but the path to them does.” This line is delivered straight-faced by Schreiber in that same Hard Knocks tone we’ve come to know and love, and he means it literally–he’s describing the minute challenges of competing on a professionally-waxed lane–but it’s an obvious metaphor for the winding paths these competitors are each on.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This whole “let’s pick an under-covered sport and see if we can Drive to Survive it” move doesn’t always work–trust me, I’ve seen ‘em all–but there’s an inherent charm to bowling. Born to Bowl capably channels that charm, and it’s a fun watch.

How To Watch Born To Bowl

If you’re new to HBO Max, you can sign up for as low as $10.99/month with ads, but an ad-free subscription will cost $18.49/month.

If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the discounted Disney+ Bundles with Hulu and HBO Max. With ads, the bundle costs $19.99/month and without ads, $32.99/month.

Scott Hines is a Louisville, Kentucky-based writer and publisher of the much-loved Action Cookbook Newsletter.