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I haven't made a league night post in a very long time, so let me first catch up on what's been going on with my bowling activities. The last time I made a league night post was last season. Our team ended up in fifth place or somewhere around there. From there, my cousin, my sister, and I played in another summer league. My friend couldn't bowl with us in the summer this time, so we got one of our winter league friends to bowl with us for the summer. We didn't get off to a really fast start, but we made a good run in the last few weeks of the summer season and ended up getting third place.
Moving forward to the current bowling season, I have been made a "regular" member of the team. One of our teammates from last season decided that I should play on the team full-time, so he joined a different team for this season. Ironically, he's on the same team as our friend that bowled with us in the summer.
Anyway, we got off to a quick start, but I've been struggling for pretty much the entire season. Our winter league is a second-shift league, which means that another league has already played on the lanes before we start. That means that, by the time we get started, the oil on the lanes has already been "burnt up" by the people in the previous league. Less oil = more friction = more hook.Now I'll admit, I do like being able to hook the ball, but I've never seen my ball hook so much. My rev rate is nowhere near that of modern power players, but I still was able to play the fourth arrow. If you look about 15 feet down the lane, there are seven arrows on the lane. The fourth arrow is about 20 inches away from the right gutter. My ball was crossing the fourth arrow, going all the way out to about eight inches away from the right gutter, and coming back to the 1-3 pocket. I've never been able to hook the ball that much, but there is just so much friction that I am forced to circle the lane like that almost every night. During the summer league (and for most of my bowling "career"), I normally play much straighter. Typically something like crossing the second arrow (10 inches away from the right gutter), getting out to about five inches away from the right gutter, and coming back to the pocket.
That means that I had to move my target at the arrows 10 inches to the left--a HUGE move for someone like me who was never able to circle the lane like that. Combine that with all of the other adjustments I needed to make to actually carry all 10 pins from that deep, and I ended up being very, very far away from my "comfort zone." As you can expect, I found it quite difficult to make good shots while playing outside of my comfort zone.
I'm a huge believer in striving to be a versatile bowler. So, I actually stuck with it for the entire first half of the season. I never really get a chance to play that far to the left, so I wanted to get as much practice with it as I could. Unfortunately, my scores have been very erratic, which have resulted in my current 158 average. Not bad, but not really good either... Definitely not enough to get first place in this league.
Last Friday, I made a somewhat risky decision: I decided to play using my plastic spare ball.
Let me give the non-bowlers a little background info... I always see casual bowlers try different things to get their balls to hook. Unfortunately, what a lot of people don't know is that they're only doing half of the job. Manipulating the release to put side roll on a ball does help make a ball curve, but the ball actually needs to do most of the work. Bowling balls are made with different materials, and most "hook-ball" bowlers use balls that have special resin coverstocks that greatly increase response to friction on the lane. To put it simply, they use balls that hook way more than the plastic "house balls" found on the racks at bowling alleys. I like to shoot straight at spares, so I always use a plastic ball because it doesn't hook nearly as much as any of my other balls do. Now, that doesn't mean that a plastic ball will never hook. If you put side roll on a plastic ball, and there's enough friction on the lane, then it will hook.
So, since we've been seeing so much friction on the lane, I decided to try using the plastic ball as my strike ball. I was able to play straighter up the lane and stay there all night long. I was rolling my ball straight up the second arrow, only making speed adjustments as the oil on the lanes started to dry out. It was the most consistent look I have had all season long, and it was right in my comfort zone.
Some may be wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? Well, most reactive resin bowling balls also have special cores that help further increase hook and also increase hitting power. My plastic ball does not have a special core, so I was a afraid that I would leave a lot of corner pins because my ball wasn't hitting hard enough. But, since we entered the second half of the season, I just decided to take that risk. I couldn't really do any worse than I had been up to that point.
The result? 184, 199, and 210 for a 593 series. Yeah, hitting power wasn't really a problem. Actually, my plastic ball looked and sounded like it was hitting harder than some of the other people's reactive balls. I really did not think it would work that well. My average up to that point was 158... I don't think anyone expected me to shoot almost 600, especially since I was using a plastic ball.
So, I think it's safe to say that I'll be using that ball for the rest of the season. Unless, of course, they decide to put out more oil on the lanes or something.
The picture this time is a picture of my plastic spare ball: a Simpsons Pin Pals Viz-A-Ball made by Brunswick. It's kind of beat up from the years of use, but it still works well.
