The Beginning
The year was: 1956.
The place was: Hillsdale High School in San Mateo California
My first recollection of Billy Hardwick was that of disbelief. What a sight it was. He was a sophomore, a year behind me in school. He was all of 5’3” and weighed-in at exactly 99-pounds.
He came out and (tried out) for the Varsity football team. The Head Coach, Frank Collins, looked at him and said that he was too small to play, but since we were a new school and needed players, he told Billy that he could hold the blocking-bags during practice. He also told him that because of his size (or lack of it) that he wouldn’t be able to issue him a team uniform.
But, Billy had guts and said that he still wanted to play and practice with the team. It was a cold and rainy day in September. There he was in his ragged, old sweat-shirt, sweat-pants and wearing his tennis shoes. The shoes were those old “high-top” canvas style and the laces were tied around the tops about 4-times. His skinny, little ankles were way too small to fill-up the tops of the shoes and it looked like he was walking around with two small “sacks-of-potatoes” hanging off of the bottoms of his legs.
The practice field was very wet and muddy that day, and the first chance I had to block him and the big blocking-bag that he was trying to hold-up, I put a little bit of an “extra” effort into it. The poor little kid had no chance. He went slipping and sprawling and sliding before eventually ending up on his back in the middle of a huge mud puddle. On his way down, all you could see were arms and legs going in every direction as he tried in vain to maintain his balance. It was an absolute riot. Even all of the Coaches were laughing.
I intentionally humiliated him once again when I reached down to help him up and purposely stepped on his foot with my football cleats. He let out a scream and rolled over (face first) in the mud. Now, he was covered from head-to-toe in the sloppy quagmire. It was hilarious. Everybody there was howling. Everybody that is, except for Billy. Looking back though, I was probably a big “bully” for doing that to him. Even though he never said it, I am sure that he hated me for doing that to him.
Basically that was the end of his football career. He did go on to play on the basketball, baseball and cross-country teams. Despite his slight stature, he was a fierce competitor. As the years went by, he would eventually prove “that” to everybody. His burning desire that he possessed soon became evident when a new bowling center opened in our town and he was finally able to find (and master), his sport.
During that year we became the best of friends, and that friendship has been a close one for 6-decades. I owe him a lot from what he has taught me and the countless doors that he has helped me to open. We have (personally) endured a lot together and I have countless stories about him. I will be telling some of them here……at least the ones that are suitable for print!!!
History tells us that he did go on the Tour, twice becoming Bowler of the Year. He was voted in the top 20-players of all-time and inducted into both the ABC and PBA Halls of Fame.
Today, Billy is alive and well and owns a very successful bowling center in Memphis, Tennessee. I still see him now and then and occasionally talk with him on the phone. If you see him, tell him that I said hello.
By the way, he did pay me back. Yeah, he was the rotten egg that got me into bowling!
The “Long and the Short of It” is now reality…is it also the future?
Published originally on Bowling Digital
An ultramodern proprietor, Ronald Dol of Bowling Dolfijn, along with avant-garde event organizer Luc Jensen of The Netherlands, and the forward thinking European Bowling Tour (EBT) have just completed a major bowling tour event which employed lane conditions like never before, at least on purpose.
During the entire 2007 EBT Bronzen Hammer Schietspoel Open, every left lane was conditioned with a 45’ oil pattern designed to play more towards the inside part of the lane and every right lane was conditioned with a 35’ oil pattern designed to play towards the outside part of the lane. Paul Moor, the reigning three times defending European Bowling Tour Ranking Champion proved those titles are well deserved as he defeated Osku Palermaa, Peter Smits and Maarten Pittens in a final one game shootout of this ground-breaking major event.
In the year 2000, then WTBA President PS Nathan called for a World Symposium in Malaysia to address many perceived problems related to the sport of bowling. Out of the symposium the WTBA Technical Committee, which was headed by Sid Allen at the time, concluded “that a single condition format was unfair, since it favored a particular style of play regardless of how the lane was oiled.”
Until now both the EBT and the PBA Tour formats make use of a single oil pattern for all rounds of competition. With these single condition events at times come social acceptance if the outcome is perceived fair by the bowling public but far too often the opposite is true. This social unrest comes as the winner of the event is perceived to have “matched up” because of their dominant style of play instead of just plainly performing better than the rest.
During that symposium in Malaysia the WTBA Technical Committee also felt the question of “who is the best bowler?” needed to be further examined. Through discussion and digging deeper into the question, the WTBA defined what they feel the traits that make up a World Class bowling player should be. The committee created what is known as VPARK; Versatility, Power, Accuracy,Repeatability and Knowledge. There was one trait however that was at the very top of each members list, Versatility.
The members felt that “the ability to bowl over a wide range of conditions elevated a player from one of quality to that of greatness” and therefore led to the conclusion “that WTBA’s present oiling procedures were not conducive to identifying and rewarding great players, but instead only identified the specialists.” Then committee member Craig Woodhouse suggested the concept of multiple conditions and it was unanimously agreed that this is the path for all future World Championships.
An over whelming majority of single condition events employ conditions in the thirty-seven to forty-two foot range. The WTBA dual condition events however use oil patterns thirty-five feet or shorter and forty-three feet or longer. So where does that leave the bowling players of the world to prepare for these World Championship events? The answer is you either need to own or have parents that own a bowling center or have a federation that supports such training. Not many participants have either.
For the EBT Tilburg dual condition tournament to be successful and socially accepted, it was evident that during the event some educational seminars dedicated to playing the short and long patterns were needed. With the help of Hammer’s Mike Quitter and bowling ball expert Denny Torgerson, material about what bowling ball types and layouts should be used was presented. With the help of Kegel and this writer, material about the bowling lane, oil patterns and keys to play those patterns, was also presented. With almost ninety tournament participants attending the seminars, the tournament players and coaches got a head start of what to expect.
Fully realizing “baby steps” needed to be taken, the design of the patterns were on the forgiving side and such that the widest variety of bowling balls could be used. In contrast to some of the early dual condition Championship events, it was refreshing to see the players in Tilburg clearly understood how the patterns needed to be attacked.
The feedback from the players according to Ronald Dol confirmed what Sid Allen’s group had concluded in that year 2000 symposium, that “dual lane conditions are fairer than a single condition event.” Will dual conditions be a thing of the future? Ronald Dol sure believes it will and he felt “they had a tremendous event with a great deal of enthusiasm from the players and spectators.” Dol and Jensen have already confirmed the 2008 EBT event in Tilburg will be dual lane conditions again.
It’s only a matter of time before more tournament organizers follow the lead of the innovative group in The Netherlands. Dual conditions may not be the answer the sporting players are looking for at each and every event or might it? After all it does satisfy the most essential criteria of becoming a world class bowling player…VERSATILITY.
Length vs. Volume
We at Kegel hear it all the time with statements like “man, the lanes are really flooded today” when a player has trouble hooking the ball or “wow, the lanes are really dry” when the ball hooks more than they are used to seeing. The variables that make up the playing environment today are so complex that one would need a super computer and a physics degree to decipher everything involved. There are so many factors other than oil that make up our playing environment but oil is the one factor everyone likes to focus on and for the purpose of this article, we will discuss this elusive, controversial and unseen variable as it relates to length and volume.
The length of a competition oil pattern may be the most important factor in how the bowler plays the lanes. While I was PBA Tour Player Services Director and Kegel was the official lane maintenance provider for the PBA Tour, there was a flood of information provided each week by Kegel to the players. Some of the more observant players began to take notice of how each of the patterns played and correlated their observations to the posted pattern.
The one item that seemed to be consistent with how a pattern played and developed was the length. I’ll never forget PBA Champion Ryan Shafer telling me he only looked at the length and the number of 2 to 2 loads on the weekly posted program sheet. The length gave him an idea of where he was going to play and the number of 2 to 2 loads gave him an idea of the difficulty - it's no different today. Knowing the length of the oil pattern and how it relates to your style of play may be the most important information you can learn about oil patterns.
In basic terms, the length of the pattern will determine how much time the bowling ball spends in the dry part of the lane (back end) and therefore how much time it is able to hook. For example; a length of 34 feet using modern bowling balls will usually force a player to play a more outside line because of the excessive amount of hook the ball will incur as it spends over 26 feet in the dry backend.
On the other end of the spectrum, a length of 44 feet will only give the ball 16 feet of dry backends, and therefore less time to hook towards the pocket. Therefore the player will normally play a line that is “closer to the pocket” since the ball has minimal time to hook into the pocket.
When using pattern lengths in the 37-40 foot range, the lane surface is usually the greatest factor in determining where the optimal place to play is, and that is never really known until competition begins and players experiment with different lines and ball choices. In this case a player must keep a very open mind when it comes to strategy.
Volume of oil on the other hand is not really a good barometer of how lanes will play since knowing the volume in itself does not tell you where the oil is applied to the lane surface. This reality can be found by looking no further than a short-long pattern example of the 2005 WTBA World Ranking Masters patterns. In those two patterns, the short pattern had a total oil volume of 20.76 milliliters while the long pattern had a total volume of 20.02 milliliters of oil. This is because the basic structure of shorter oil patterns normally have more "wide loads" than longer oil patterns, which increases the overall volume.
Every player at this event would tell you the short pattern had more “hook” than the long pattern. The greater amount of hook is because of the longer amount of time the ball spends on the drier back end.
In short, assuming equal lane surfaces, the load structure (width) of a pattern and where the oil is applied to the lane front-to-back determines how much overall hook a specific pattern allows the bowling ball to have - not necessarily how much overall volume is on the lane.
The Long and the Short of It: Pattern Play and Ball Choices
At various high level events the last few years, dual lane conditions have become more common. These lane patterns are categorized as long and short, or could also be referred to as "inside" and "outside", as John Davis likes to refer to them. The long patterns normally range from 42 to 45 feet in length and the short patterns range from 32 to 35 feet in length, with both of these lengths having very similar required ball motion characteristics.
Most players normally play on oil patterns that are in the 38 to 41 foot range at their home bowling center, or single condition events. These medium length patterns are used mainly because it puts most players in an area of the lane that is more comfortable to most of the participants. In addition, when these pattern lengths are used, high flare balls and layouts, which most ball drillers employ in their customers arsenal, normally work the best.
Medium length patterns also tend to allow the lane surface to be the determining factor when the pattern is not a blocked recreational oil pattern. These non-blocked medium oil pattern lengths however tend to favor a certain style, breakpoint, or "match up" too often, which can lead to social nonacceptance.
Unfortunately for the players, the ball choices used on medium length oil patterns may not be the best choices for World Championship dual condition events. (Note: World Bowling has since gone to single pattern events; medium length patterns may be the prevailing choice most often.)
For patterns that are shorter or longer than this 38-41 feet range, the breakpoint must be managed in a more defined and minimal manner. One must also look at the oil patterns being used, how they relate to ball motion, and what motion would be most advantageous to create the greatest margin for error.
Maximizing margin for error is what all players, coaches, and ball drillers should be looking for when deciding on where to play, how to play, and what equipment should be used for a specific oil pattern. Not withstanding a specific lane surface characteristics (topography and wear) and who you follow - different styles of play can affect oil pattern breakdown drastically.
Let's start with the short pattern since it seems to be most challenging for today's modern player, available equipment choices, and layouts. As stated before in John Davis's article, "The long and the short of it", the short condition will be 32 to 35 feet in length.
The high point of the short oil pattern will normally begin from the forth board and rise to the eighth board. Inside the eighth board, the pattern is usually completely flat. Since the oil pattern is on the relatively short side (this used to be the normal pattern length before aggressive bowling balls) there is a lot of lane left, which other than topographical influences, has no definable shape or guidance.
Therefore the player should be targeting along the oil line as long as possible to maximize their room for error. More than likely a player will need to make a few technique adjustments as well. This entails foot placement during the slide, swing direction, hand position, and last but not least, correct ball motion.
If a player chooses a ball that is designed to go long and break sharp, it will not be able to read the oil line. If a player chooses a ball that is to aggressive and hooks to soon, it will force the player away from the oil pattern slope (from least to most amount of oil).
How should the short pattern be attacked? Here are some points and characteristics a player and coach should be looking for when playing the short pattern. Note: Line up techniques are for a right handed player, left handers should reverse the information:
GET THE SLIDING FOOT RIGHT!
The main thing a player must do first is make sure they are lining up the correct way. Most people will release the ball about 4-8 boards right (right handed player) of their sliding foot. Since the low point of the pattern has been stated to be outside of the forth board, if a player is sliding left of 15, most likely they are playing in the flat part of the pattern way too long, which minimizes their room for error.
Depending on the player and amount of free hook to the right, the sliding foot should be somewhere as far right as the sixth board to not much left of the 15th board.
KEEP THE INSIDE-OUT SWING PATH TO A MINIMUM!
If a player's swing is coming from the inside to the outside too much, they will have a launch angle that is too high which will make it very difficult to target along the oil line early enough or long enough.
The more inside out your swing path is, the more difficult it is to go "up the lane". Swing directions that are straighter down the target line will normally be more advantageous on the short patterns.
SWING DIRECTION TIP: Place your ball into the swing either straight down the target line or even a little to the right of your target line. This will keep the swing direction in a more "up the lane" direction. If you place your ball into the swing inside the target line, this will make your swing a "figure 8" type swing path, causing a launch angle that is often too high for short patterns.
KEEP THE HAND QUIET
Historically, players that excel on conditions that allow the extreme outside to play tend to be quieter in their release. What that means is there is not a lot of un-cupping and re-cupping of the wrist through the release point. It really does not matter if your axis rotation is high or low. Pete Weber is one of the best gutter players of the time, and his axis rotation is almost 90 degrees, but his release is very "quiet".
Get with a qualified coach to experiment what works best for your game and mental mindset.
EQUIPMENT
Choose bowling balls and/or layouts that create an elongated break point! Bowling balls that have high differential RG values, or layouts that maximize the differential in a high differential ball, tend to have a break point that is very short in nature. Basically the ball releases energy in a very short length wise area.
If you do not know your Positive Axis Point, find it before you layout or choose balls for the short and long patterns.
When Chris Barnes won his first PBA Title in Portland Oregon on a 32 foot oil pattern on freshly resurface wood lanes, his ball reps set him up a Navy Quantum with the pin located in his track (about 6 ¾ from his PAP). This helped him keep the ball in play because the weight block was already in a very stable position, and therefore flare was virtually eliminated.
When you eliminate flare, you minimize backend reaction. Most players on the PBA Tour will use layouts that place the pin farther from their PAP rather than closer to their PAP. Another option is to use a ball that already has a low flare core, preferably less than .026 differential.
However, the best option for most players is probably a low differential urethane, or even a polyester ball. These ball types will allow you target along the oil line for an extended period of time because they release energy in a more continual manner, which will maximize your room for error.
On the long patterns, the same type of ball motion philosophy should be used. The only difference is within the aggressiveness of the cover stock and how aggressive a player can go with the layout or ball core.
While I was Player Services Director for the PBA Tour, a.k.a. the PBA Ball Drilling Truck, when the players bowled on longer patterns, their ball layout choices were in the 4 ¾" to 6 ¼" layout spectrum from their PAP.
The reason for this is they are trying to control the breakpoint and minimize the backend change of direction, much like the short pattern philosophy. To refer again to John Davis' article again, "the long pattern dictates the ball will hook a minimal amount; a player's break point will usually need to be closer to the pocket." Since the breakpoint needs to be closer to the pocket, backend change of direction must be minimized while at the same time retaining energy.
Many high level players will strategically place an extra hole or the mass bias in a position to enhance these characteristics.
The long oil pattern slope will usually begin at the 10 board and increase to its peak at the 15th board. If your dominant ball path is either outside the 10 board or inside the 15th board, you will be playing in the flattest area of the pattern.
To maximize your margin for error, much like the short pattern, you should be targeting along the slope of the oil pattern.
The dual patterns used at the World Championship level are more defined than most of the patterns used in single condition events, and therefore should actually be simpler to figure out. As a player and coach, it is up to you to figure out exactly how to attack a specific oil pattern, and lane surface characteristic, for your particular style of play. (2016 Note: World Bowling has since gone to single pattern events where medium patterns will most likely dominate the pattern choice.)
The spectrum of available equipment is very wide these days so don't be so close minded you don't use it. There is definitely not a rule that says you must use the strongest ball in your bag, so don't be afraid to try the weakest ball in your arsenal if the environment warrants it.
One last thought everyone should remember about today's bowling environment. The group of players as a whole can and will make a pattern develop more predictable, more unpredictable, easier, or tougher. On top of that, with today's synthetic lane surfaces, topography can be anything on any part of the lane. Don't think for a moment topography can't change a way the oil pattern plays from lane-to-lane or center-to-center; it can, and does greatly.
Until LaneMap Guides become common place at all high level events, and oil patterns change less than they do now throughout any given period of games, these unknowns to the players will ultimately determine what happens to the development of the oil pattern, and what the resulting scoring pace will be.
So when competing in today's environment, let your ball be your guide more than ever, and get all you can get. What one squad does means very little to what the following squad may do.
The Long and Short of It: About the controversy surrounding multiple lane conditions
There is much controversy surrounding multiple conditions. It seems so different than the past. However, the sport of bowling has changed and formats of competition have not kept up with these changes to promote Fair Play for all styles.
The WTBA Technical Committee has separated the styles into two groups; first, those whose style prefers a breakpoint closer to the foul line and second, those who style prefer a breakpoint closer to the pins. By using two conditions, long and short, we can give each of the basic styles an equal advantage.
Out of the 30 plus tournaments that have been played on the two conditions, only one or two have shown unfair play as an apparent result and those were not between the two basic groups. They were thought of as unfair because of the left hand, right hand and light ball styles.
For the last 30 years fair play has become increasingly more difficult to attain, even though lane maintenance machines and lane oil chemistry have made major advances. At Kegel, we have over 1500 high level tournaments of experiences where we have provided our services.
Even with this experience and our advanced tools, we never feel comfortable with single condition formats. Multiple conditions give us a little more confidence that Fair Play can be achieved.
Furthermore, it is our opinion that multiple condition tournaments are only a band-aid to reduce the chances of Unfair Play. To achieve consensus of Fair Play for all, bowling must dig deeper into the reasons of our integrity and credibility crisis. That cannot happen over night. For now however, we feel confident that Fair Play is much more achievable.
Fair Play for all is a must. The sport cannot grow and prosper without it. All must agree with this statement.
Observations of international experiences of Multiple Condition Tournaments:
Five years ago the WTBA Technical Committee created the definition of the best bowling player. These attributes are:
- Accuracy
- Repeatability
- Power
- Knowledge
- Versatility
A bowler who possesses a balance of these five characteristics is therefore considered a world class player. From this definition, the WTBA Technical Committee produced the multiple condition concept. Instead of waiting for the lane condition to match up to a bowlers style, the committee forced the player to become versatile instead of being single dimensional. This format gave the player more prestige for winning instead of everyone thinking his game matched up with that particular condition.
Watching the many multiple condition tournaments, we have found that many players have not played the lanes correctly (knowledge), they used the wrong ball (knowledge) or they could not play one or the other conditions very well (versatility).
At every player and managers meeting that I have been involved in, we have told the players that the short condition was designed for playing outside and the long condition was designed to play inside. Most of the time, bowlers played the lanes the opposite way and used entirely the wrong type of bowling balls, especially on the short pattern.
I believe this is due to a lack of experience, knowledge and also the fact that most players now own and exclusively use excessively strong bowling balls and layouts. This could also be attributed to the fact that a larger majority of today's popular equipment is stronger than the equipment of five years ago. These equipment mistakes were very noticeable to the experienced and educated eye.
Here are some hints for short oil patterns:
The short condition will be 32 to 35 feet in length. The high point of the short oil pattern will normally be from the sixth to the eighth board. Inside the eighth board, the pattern is completely flat. It is also a point where the ball is only five to seven boards away from the pocket.
If the bowler attempts to play the short condition from a deep inside line because the ball hooks a lot, the ball will leave the oil pattern at an area from the eighth to the twelfth board. That does not leave much room for the ball to hold back into the pocket.
Because of the extreme amount of overall hook a short pattern will produce, by playing more towards the outside portion of the lane, the ball will have enough room to make its move towards the pocket.
We have also witnessed players trying to exclusively use very shiny equipment on the short patterns. This type of surface only adds in giving the ball little chance to begin to process to its forward roll. This lack of procession to a forward roll causes the ball to retain a high amount of energy, such that very small changes in speed, turn, and direction will result in violently different reactions.
The knowledgeable player will use a ball type that is smooth in character and play as far to the outside as possible in the lower amount of oil. This allows the ball to begin its turn towards a more forward roll which will smooth out the reaction and make the ball become more predictable as it travels down the lane.
Keep an open mind when choosing equipment to combat conditions. Here are some hints for long oil patterns:
The long oil condition will be in the 42 to 45 feet range. The high point of the oil pattern should be between the 12 and 15 board area. The oil pattern outside this area will be moderately flat and have much less slope than the 10 to 15 board area.
We have witnessed way too many bowlers playing outside on the long pattern. There is actually very little room for error in this portion of the lane on the long patterns as the pattern tends to be fairly flat in this area. If a bowler does choose an outside line on the long pattern, accuracy and repeatability will be extremely important and keeping the ball in play will be difficult to maintain.
The proper way to view a long pattern is this; if the ball comes off the end of the oil pattern at 45 feet at the five board, and there are twelve boards to cover to get to the pocket, the ball has only fifteen feet to make its move up to the pocket. Once again, like the short pattern, its basic geometry on where one should attempt to play.
Since the long pattern dictates the ball will hook a minimal amount, a player's break point will usually need to be closer to the pocket. Therefore, a bowler should find a line inside or around the second arrow as there are fewer boards to the pocket and keeping the ball in play will be much easier.
I personally watched the American Zone Youth Championships this past summer. One block on the short pattern sticks out in my mind. It was like a radio transmission was telling the young men to play inside on the short pattern. The whole squad was playing from 15 to 25 on 32 feet of oil and cranking the ball with as much speed as possible.
As we watched we felt like crying but after awhile it was almost comical. My colleague John Janawicz and I could only laugh. We watched coaches shaking their heads in frustration. They just could not get the concept in the minds of their players. That particular block scored much lower than the previous block where many bowlers played outside.
Conventional thought from a right handers point of view is that if the lanes hook, you move left and if the lanes don't hook you move right. This kind of thinking does not consider the fact that oil distance and where the ball leaves the oil pattern and enters the dry backend.
This is blocked lane thinking, not World Championship thinking. So, coaches please train your bowlers about oil distance before they get to championship events. This is not new knowledge; it is just not common knowledge ----- yet.
One more note on short and long conditions, the problem of playing long and short is somewhat different for men and women. Traditionally the women break down lanes together in the track area (7-12 board) and the graphs taken afterwards show the lane to almost be blocked after bowling.
When men bowl the whole middle of the lane oil pattern is destroyed in the front of the lane and narrows down to six or seven boards at the end. This works well on the long pattern but, on the short it is a disaster for scoring pace and the women usually outscore the men.
For the long the opposite is usually true. The women will still break down the track 4-5 boards away from the true best area to play and the men will outscore the women on the long, but not always.
In conclusion, bowling is a game of angles. If you can learn how the length of patterns directly affects how you should play a certain pattern, you will have a better chance at succeeding on all the different types of patterns you may encounter.
5 Must Know Things about Oil Pattern Taper
Oil pattern taper, the amount of lane conditioner in the front part of an oil pattern versus how much is at the end of the oil pattern, has had to change significantly as bowling ball technology has changed. Lane conditioner (lane oil) has two main functions; to protect the lane surface, and to provide smooth predictable ball motion for as many styles as possible.
1 - History
When bowling balls were balanced, the rotation of the bowling ball was very stable and there was essentially one oil ring on the surface of the ball. Front-to-back oil taper with balanced balls is very different than what is needed with modern high flaring balls, which have multiple oil rings on them.
Remember, with high flaring balls, the oil pattern breaks down from back to front and with low flaring balls it’s the opposite, oil patterns break down from front to back. As a refresher, here is an article on that explains how oil patterns breakdown differently between the two types of bowling balls: Breakdown and Carrydown – Then and Now.
At the same time that bowling balls were going through changes, lane surfaces were also changing – “it’s very hard to hit a moving target” was something John Davis used to say often when referring to the art of lane conditioning.
As we have shown often in seminars and online articles, regularly maintained wood bowling lanes are the most consistent type of lane surfaces from lane-to-lane, and bowling center to bowling center. There may be some lengthwise level differences from center to center, but the overwhelming majority of wood lanes were cut with a slight depression, which allowed statements like “the oil pattern taper should be 3:1” to be more valid.
With synthetic lanes however, lane shapes are all over the map, and blanket statements about front-to-back taper, or any oil pattern statement for that matter, can often do more harm than good for people trying to find the best solution for their bowling center.
In measuring hundreds of bowling centers around the world with the Kegel LaneMapper we have found the lanes in any one center follow the same trend as it relates to lengthwise levelness. The only exception to that rule is when bowling centers have added sections of lanes over time.
So if we simply talk about oil pattern taper as it relates to the lengthwise level of a bowling lane, if a lane went downhill we could easily increase the front-to-back taper ratio to help the ball slow down to achieve “good ball motion”. Conversely, if the lanes in a bowling center predominantly go uphill, we might decrease the taper of the oil pattern so the ball would slow down less in order to provide good ball motion for the majority of bowlers.
When lanes were made of wood and resurfaced often, and bowling balls were essentially balanced, it was that simple – but not today.
Today’s synthetic lanes can be crowned, they can be depressed, they can be depressed up front and crowned down lane or the opposite, they can be high right, high left, and anything in between. We very often have seen synthetic lanes that are shaped like a seagull wing; crowned outside and depressed in the middle.
Add the fact that your customers have bowling balls that are still balanced (low flaring) to the very unbalanced kind (high flaring), providing that perfect front-to-back taper can be a challenge.
Of course your daily house pattern is most important for your center, and getting that one pattern “right” can be accomplished, but applying a tournament pattern, or one of the many named patterns out there, and having players expecting it to play similar from center to center is like expecting to win the lottery.
2 - House Shot Patterns (Recreational Type)
Most daily patterns used in bowling centers around the world are of the easy variety – a lot of conditioner in the middle and not much outside. For these type oil patterns, it is most important to control the amount in the mid lane and at the very end of the pattern to 1, minimize carrydown and 2, to open up the outside portion of the lane.
The graphic below is of a typical oil pattern taper when only non-flaring balls were in use. The goal then was to protect and apply conditioner only in the head area and let the conditioner “bleed off” the oil transfer system the rest of the way down the lane to the end of the oil pattern. From 8’ to the end of the pattern was typically a front-to-back taper ratio of 3-4 to 1 and that was with a maximum of 20 units in the head area!
Today’s oil patterns with today’s high flaring balls require a different type of taper, and much more volume. If we start with 80 plus units in the heads, there might still be 50 plus units in the middle to the 30 foot range. We do this in order to provide the bowler with a lot of hold area and decent ball motion, along with providing durability to protect the lane as long as possible.
To get that amount of oil throughout the pattern, the buffer brush must be loaded much more throughout the oil pattern with possibly a much more drastic drop off of conditioner towards the end part of the pattern. The amount towards the end of the pattern should decrease at a rate according to the type of lane conditioner in use and/or lane topography.
Below is an example of a typical daily oil pattern taper using high flaring bowling balls. As you can see, much more conditioner is used throughout the entire pattern.
The outside portion of the pattern has very little conditioner because most centers want to provide the bowler with a lot of mistake area outside of target. So even though we may want some taper there to allow the straighter player to start more to the right, most are concerned about not having too much conditioner towards the outside area in order to provide the largest margin for error possible.
3 - Challenge and Sport Oil Patterns (Competitive)
When designing competitive oil patterns, the goals of a specific oil pattern can vary greatly. If the pattern must play good on the fresh, because of a match-play format for example, finding that perfect taper for game one might be in order. That type pattern will usually be a higher front-to-back taper ratio in order to get the ball to read the lane sooner within the oil pattern.
If the goal is for the pattern to keep players in a specific zone for a longer time, front-to-back taper might not be as important as making sure the end of the pattern holds up for more games. That type of pattern would most likely have much less taper and play more difficult on the fresh, and then become easier as depletion towards the mid and end part of the oil pattern occurs.
A perfect example of an oil pattern with very little front-to-back taper is the 2015 US Open pattern that was used in Garland Texas. The amount of oil in the middle at 8’ on this pattern proved to be in the high 50 unit range, at 22' in the mid 60 unit range, and at 2’ before the end of the oil pattern (41') was in the mid 30 unit range. The front-to-back taper in the middle of that oil pattern was about 1.75 to 1 from 8' to 41', and 2 to 1 from 22' to 41'.
Below are two graphics of the 2015 US Open oil pattern – the 3D and 2D graphs. Lane tapes were taken at 8, 14’, 22’, 27’, 32’, 36’, and 41’.
The pattern goal of that event was to try and keep the players from lofting the gutter, which was accomplished, but we cannot discount what was done with topography at that venue as well. Our studies show topography is always a factor in how oil pattern plays, develops, and breaks down. In this case, the USBC made topography public so we know lane topography definitely was an additional reason the pattern held up so well. (The why will be a future article!)
4 - Lane Conditioners
The lane conditioner you choose also must be factored into your oil pattern’s design. Lane conditioners are developed with specific characteristics and your oil pattern should complement those characteristics in order to benefit from them.
For instance; FIRE and ICE were created for increased durability and both require less conditioner at the very end of the pattern than many of our previous conditioners. If there is too much conditioner at the end of the oil pattern the ball will read the carrydown much more than if, for example, the same amount of Prodigy was at the end of the pattern.
If using our newest lane conditioner, Curve, more conditioner can be applied at the end of the oil pattern simply because it’s a higher friction conditioner, and that will help the ball slow down. Also, the ball won’t “see” what is carried down beyond the oil pattern as much as it would with FIRE or ICE. The trade-off however is durability.
5 - Topography
Now that we have those other factors covered, we can touch base on topography some more and how lane shape affects oil patterns. As we touched base earlier, wood lanes have very similar topography; all are slightly depressed (lower in the middle than the outsides) with the main differences from center to center in lengthwise levelness.
Yes we have more wear issues with wood lanes, which can be corrected with a resurfacing or re-coating, but with synthetic lanes we have more diverse shapes on the lane than ever before in the modern history of the game. Those shapes can vary from lane to lane, and even within the same lane. This makes finding that perfect oil pattern on synthetic lanes across any one bowling center more challenging than ever.
For lanes that are predominantly crowned, lowering the amount of conditioner in the mid lane and at the end of the pattern will help the ball lose energy at the proper rate, which will help provide truer ball motion. Crown lanes tend to act like lanes that go downhill, so anything you can do to help the ball slow down will help your bowlers with good ball motion.
For lanes that are severely depressed, and if you wish your bowlers to play right of center, additional conditioner in the mid lane and at the end of the oil pattern helps reduce friction slightly, and therefore helps the ball not lose energy as quick. Think of depressed lane like a banked curve on a race track – the inside part of the lane is lower than the outside part of the lane so the ball is rotating up the hill causing it to use energy quicker, along with normal force helping the ball move more to center.
For seagull wing shaped lanes, and believe us when we say there are many overlays like this, shorter patterns will need increased front-to-back taper in order to get the ball to read the lane earlier. Yet longer patterns on this lane shape will need less taper simply because from 10-10 the lane is depressed - once the ball gets towards the middle and end part of the pattern it sees the lane more, and sooner, as the oil depletes.
Conclusion
In the article titled Breakdown and Carrydown - By The Numbers, we showed how today the front part of the lane never really depletes to the point of excessive friction unless there is a major wear issue – it’s the mid lane and backend that deplete to the point of the ball seeing a great amount of friction.
Sure the front part of the pattern depletes, but if we start with 70-100 units up front, or less like in the US Open example, at the end of play there is still 30 to 40 plus units of conditioner in the front part of the lane, which is plenty to provide a low amount of friction.
In addition, that part of the lane the bowling ball has the least amount revolutions and the most amount of speed - both of those attributes make the ball “see the lane less” than it does at it slows down and revolutions increase.
The point is, front-to-back taper ratios with today’s patterns is not as important as controlling the amount of conditioner in the mid lane and at very end of the pattern.
If you get that correct in your center, the majority of bowlers in your center will have predictable and controllable ball motion, and back end change (carry down) will be minimal. And for the most part, hopefully, you will have happy bowlers.
The Truth About Tournament Oil Patterns and Conversions
At Kegel we get many requests for converting oil patterns to and from different lane machine technologies. Sometimes it can be for a specific tournament pattern or it may be a named oil pattern. Although we fully realize the intent, we also know that there are many factors other than the oil pattern that determine ball motion, and how easy or difficult lanes play.
One technical reason some oil patterns cannot be converted is simply because some lane machines do not have the capability to apply an oil pattern exactly like the machine it was made for. A few of the new longer Landmark Patterns are good examples as these patterns were designed specifically for the FLEX lane machine.
For example, the Eiffel Tower is a 48 foot Sport pattern and with the variable buffer speed upgrade feature the FLEX has, the last seven feet utilizes a buffer speed of 200 rpm which applies a very light film of conditioner in this zone. If a lane machine does not have the variable buff option the buffer will be rotating at 500 rpm, and apply more conditioner to that zone, making the pattern play much tighter that it was intended to play. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun if applied with other lane machine technology or the pattern will be terrible, it just won’t “play the same”.
However, even if the oil pattern is matched up perfectly from one technology to the next, there can still be differences in types of conditioners used, cleaner type, cleaner dilution, lane surface friction, and lane surface topography. Even bowler differences (who you will follow at the tournament) from your home center to wherever that tournament pattern will be used at can have a huge impact.
For instance, some lane conditioners play slicker or allow the ball to pick up earlier than other conditioners, some conditioner’s carrydown affect ball motion more than other conditioners, and some lane cleaners leave more residue behind than others causing different amounts of back-end hook. The dilution ratio, the amount of cleaner to water mixture, also affects ball motion, especially at the back-end.
For lane surfaces, conditioned wood lanes tend to hook more and earlier than conditioned synthetic lanes. Higher textured synthetic lanes tend to have an “arcing” ball motion, while smoother synthetic lanes tend to be more “skid-snappy”.
When practicing on a tournament pattern at home, you may be all alone or with a small group with similar styles. We know in today’s bowling environment using today’s equipment, it doesn’t take very long to change that oil pattern into something else simply by rolling balls down the lane. Once at the tournament site however you will be following a much more diverse group of styles, which may very well transform that oil pattern into something different.
It’s not even uncommon for us to see the scoring pace change from different squads in the same tournament using the exact same oil pattern just by the style of bowlers on specific squads, or even by the type of bowling balls used by the participants on different squads!
Topography is also a huge variable when it comes to how a ball hooks (how a ball depletes energy) and how much it hooks. A portion of a lane sloped opposite the rotation of the ball will cause the ball to lose energy quickly, while a portion of a lane sloped with the rotation of the ball will cause the ball to lose energy slower. These slopes on the lane surface can also help the ball move more easily towards the pocket, or make it more difficult for the ball to move towards the pocket.
A textbook example of how lane surface and topography can affect scoring pace is from the 2014 and 2015 Teen Masters. In this event, many of the participants played both years, all players use the same type balls, the same oil and cleaner were used, and the long oil pattern was exactly the same both years, so we can discount all those variables.
However, in 2015, the event was held at a newer installation and the lanes are predominately shaped with a certain type topography that is known to produce high scores; the overall scoring pace was 20 pins higher in 2015 than in 2014 and an abnormal amount of 300 games were bowled. The 2015 environment also benefited some players more than others as averages between the two events were 40 pins higher per game in 2015 versus 2014, for certain styles of play.
Kegel has mapped thousands of bowling lanes around the world and we have yet to find two lanes that have the exact same measurements with regard to lengthwise tilts, crosstilts, crowns, and depressions. We also have yet to find a perfectly level lane. It could be said that bowling lanes are like finger prints; no two are the same.
Therefore, perfect and exact pattern oil patterns, or conversions, GUARANTEE that ball motion will be different at home versus where you will play on that pattern at whatever event you are going to.
A good coaching tip is to practice on a competitive type oil pattern that has a similar distance to the tournament pattern you will be bowling on. This type of preparation will help you to keep an open mind and to be flexible when you arrive at the tournament site. It is easy to get overly caught up in oil patterns with all the information and focus on oil patterns today. Unfortunately, more often than not, this closes the mind and shifts focus to “what should be” instead of “what might be”.
In conclusion, if you are practicing at home on a tournament oil pattern, and planning on competing or coaching in that tournament, take that oil pattern with a grain of salt and keep your mind open - very open. We can just about guarantee things will be different at the tournament site than at your home center.
2015 USBC Open Championship Oil Pattern Program Sheet
This month’s Inside Line feature article is about key items on the KEGEL FLEX program sheet of both the Team event and the Singles and Doubles event oil patterns for 2015 USBC Open Championships.
Oil Pattern Distance
Oil pattern distance is one of the main key items to look for on any program sheet. The distance tells us how much dry back-end area is within any one pattern and can give us a good idea of where to play on the lane, providing the lane surface is fairly neutral. Essentially, the shorter the oil pattern is, the farther towards the outside portion of the lane one should play, and the longer the oil pattern is, the farther inside a pattern might play. Of course there are other variables that can affect this theory; like the amount of conditioner on the outside portion of the lane, the shape (topography) of the lane surface, and the friction of the lane surface. However, knowing the distance of the oil pattern, and how it affects your particular style of play, can help you line up quicker than not knowing this important pattern detail.
The distance of the oil pattern can be found at the top left corner of the KEGEL FLEX program sheet.
Oil Per Board Value Number
The Oil Per Board value, found at the top right of the FLEX oil pattern program sheet, is the size of the oil stream in microliters - the higher the value, the larger the oil stream, and the larger the stream, the more conditioner is applied to the lane.
Number of 2-2 Loads
The Number of 2-2 loads can often be a measure of difficulty. Think about these loads as the base of the oil pattern and all loads inside of the 2-2 loads are the shape of the oil pattern. The more 2-2 loads the more difficult an oil pattern will play because once there is a certain amount of conditioner across the entire lane surface, the shape of the oil pattern becomes less relevant.
At this year’s Open Championships, the 2-2 loads make up 12.95 milliliters of the total volume of the 27.05 singles/doubles oil pattern and 14.80 milliliters of the total volume of the 26.90 milliliters team event pattern. In comparison, in most house patterns the 2-2 loads make up 3.7 milliliters of the total volume of the pattern which is in the 22 milliliter range.
The 2-2 loads are normally the first loads on the forward pass and the last load before the buff line in the reverse pass.
Buffer RPM
The FLEX lane machines in use at this year’s championship have four buffer speed options, which are noted on the program sheet by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Number 1 is what we call slow buff, and it has a speed of 100 RPM. Number 2 is medium buff and has a speed of 200 RPM. Number 3 buffs at 500 RPM and is the default speed that is used on previous models such as the Kustodian ION and Kustodian Walker. Number 4 is high buff and has a speed of 720 RPM. (Note: Individual FLEX owners can customize the buffer RPM settings for their needs, so you may see different numbers on different program sheets.)
The different buffer speeds on the FLEX allow us to do a couple things; one is it allows us to fine tune the front to back taper of the oil pattern without changing lane machine drive speeds. The other is it allows us to condition the lanes in less time by allowing us to apply more conditioner in the front part of the lane without slowing the machine down, as we would have to do in machines with single speed buffer motors.
In short, the faster the speed of the buffer brush, the more conditioner can be applied in any one section of the oil pattern. Conversely, the slower the speed of the buffer brush, less conditioner will be applied to the lane surface.
You will notice on this year’s championship patterns the choice of using buffer speed 4 in the front part of the oil pattern on both the forward and reverse pass of the pattern. Medium and slow buff is not used in this year’s patterns.
The Load Structure
As previously mentioned, once there is a certain amount of conditioner on the lane the load structure becomes less relevant. However, one thing to note this year compared to recent years, and a house pattern, is how none of the loads are “stacked up”. This means the inside load streams are spread out across the oil pattern which makes the pattern a simple blend, or crowned oil pattern (See graphics above).
Because of this type load structure there is not a defined oil line anywhere throughout either the Team or Doubles/Singles event patterns which places a premium on consistent shot making and accuracy. Only once bowling begins, and depletion takes place, can an oil line be developed if, and that is a big if, everyone plays in the same place from the beginning of practice to at least through the first few frames of game one. This is called “managing the oil pattern” in modern bowling vernacular.
This year’s USBC Open Championship should prove out to be one of the lower scoring championships in recent years simply because of the flatness of the patterns. However, it should also prove out to be one of the most competitive because when scores are lower, the gap between the higher scores and lower scores is much narrower.
In closing, if you have not already made the trip to El Paso, practice your spare game, have a good game plan with your teammates, and let your ball be your guide.
Who do you follow? We're not talking about Twitter...
In previous Inside Line articles, we showed how oil pattern breakdown happens with today's high flaring bowling balls and how different styles of play can affect an oil pattern in different ways. In this article, we will show how different groups of players with similar styles can greatly affect an oil pattern by strategically "managing the oil pattern" during practice time and the first game, and the resulting scoring pace for all those that follow these skillful "pattern managers."
The scene was the Men's Team event second block on the WTBA Seoul oil pattern during the 2013 WTBA World Championships in Las Vegas. The WTBA rule for practice time for 5 person team event is 15 minutes, then all teams bowl 3 games moving lanes every game. This gives us about 4-5 games per lane by the time each team finishes the 3rd frame of game one.
Our testing and after tapes at many modern day events show that when players play a similar line each and every shot during this time on a fresh oil pattern, over 50 percent of the lane conditioner can be removed from that area throughout the ENTIRE length of the applied oil pattern. This is significant and something all competitive players and coaches must be aware of in today's game.
Here was a test showing how much conditioner was removed in the area of play after each 3 games:
The significance and rapid pattern change is so prevalent in today's game that some Federations even employ multiple coaches during championships- one coach on the lanes helping the players during competition, and another coach "scouting out" the pair of lanes they will be moving to. Just knowing how and where the teams are playing on the lanes in front them can give them valuable information and help them get lined up quicker. In championship events, this can be the difference between winning, losing, or not even getting a chance to win. This played out exactly this way during the 2013 World Championships this year in the men's division.
Here is a graphic of the Seoul oil pattern just before the men's second squad of team event took the lanes - the graphic is with the perspective of looking at the oil pattern from the pins, so the 10 pin side is the left side of the graphic. Also shown below are the Sport Bowling ratios at multiple tape distances before the players took to the lanes:
As a side note, the WTBA Seoul oil pattern is asymmetrical with more oil outside on the left side than the right side, hence the lower ratios on the left side. You may also notice that at 32' this pattern does not fall within the 3 to 1 ratio parameters, but Sport Bowling ratios only use 22' and 2' before the end of the pattern to calculate whether it meets USBC Sport Bowling requirements, and the WTBA does not have any ratio requirements.
During this second block of team play, with these pairs of lanes being right in front of the tournament office, I was able to watch and see how each of the teams on these pairs were breaking down the lanes during the 15 minutes of practice. While watching Puerto Rico and Brazil on 57-58 play more outside, and the teams on 55-56 play more inside, I was wondering how much an effect that might have on the teams coming to these pair of lanes in games 2 and 3, so I planned on taking after tapes as soon as the block was over. Little did I know at the time, the way the teams on 57-58 broke down that pair would help Team Finland make history.
After 15 minutes of practice and three 5-man team games (15 plus games per lane), here is what the Seoul pattern morphed into on lanes 55-56:
From looking at these after tapes, it is clear how deep inside the bowlers on this pair ended up playing the lanes, which all came from how the initial teams decided to play the lanes in practice and game 1.
Here are the after ratios of lanes 55-56, calculated the same way as before:
The ratios normally get lower up front as the oil pattern gets depleted from the middle of the lane. What makes scoring pace rise as players break down the oil pattern is when all balls come together towards the end part of the oil pattern, which raises the ratios from outside to the middle. In this example the ratios from the fresh oil pattern went from about 3:1 to 3.6:1 at 32 feet and from 2.9:1 to 3.8:1 at 37 feet. This is enough for world class players to increase the scoring pace, and this block was no exception.
Here is the resulting scoring pace of each team for each game of this particular block of games on lanes 55-56::
As you can see by game 3 that pair became more playable because of oil pattern development with both Team Denmark and Team Korea breaking the 1100 barrier. It took longer because of how deep the previous teams played that pair. The reason it took longer is because when teams start in the deeper amount of oil, it takes longer for the ball to reach the "spark point", or in other words, break down the oil pattern enough for the ball to poke through the oil film and get to the lane surface. Once the ball sees the lane surface, it also sees friction. The earlier the ball sees friction within the oil pattern, the easier that pattern becomes because left of that is the created oil line.
And now the pair of lanes where the Seoul pattern was changed into something else, which helped Team Finland make history. The mutated Seoul oil pattern on lanes 57-58:
From looking at these after tapes, it is clear how much more outside the bowlers on this pair ended up playing the lanes, which also was decided because of how the initial teams decided to play the lanes in practice and game 1.
Here are the after ratios of this pair, calculated the same way as before:
While lanes 55-56 went to 3.6 and 3.8 to 1 towards the end of the oil pattern, the players on lanes 57-58 took the ratios to 5.2 and 5.6 to 1! This is borderline what many house shots are in today's game, but like I said before, most of the change happens within practice and the beginning of game one.
Here is the resulting scoring pace on lanes 57-58 of each team for each game during this block of games:
As you can see by the team game total scores, the teams that were fortunate enough to follow Puerto Rico and Brazil benefited greatly, but none more than Team Finland. This second team game with a score of 1225, along with the momentum that gave them and another 1200 plus score in game 3, catapulted them into the Team finals. After winning their semi-final match they defeated Team USA in the finals for the first team Gold medal for Finland in 30 years.
Fortunately, during this championship we also had available Kegel's LaneMap Guide of Sunset Station which shows the gravity influence on the ball based upon topography so we were able to see if one pair was significantly different causing that to be the reason for higher scores this block on 57-58, but that proved to be not the case, as the below graphic will clearly show. Both pairs have very similar characteristics.
Finally, one more look an after bowling graphic of both patterns and the resulting ratios side by side:
A well renowned Kegel laneman and now National Team Coach for Indonesia, John Forst, had a saying; "the applied oil pattern is only the pattern until the bowlers start bowling on it. After that, they are the ones that decide what happens, not the laneman."
In today's vernacular, the Seoul oil pattern, or any other named oil pattern for that matter, is only the intended pattern until players start rolling balls over it, and then that named pattern becomes something else. Some players can turn it into Easy Street, and some can turn it into the Highway to Hell. Keep your fingers crossed you follow players that can turn things into Easy Street.
Oil Pattern Graphs: KOSI Composite Graphs
How many times have you gone to a bowling tournament, or even a bowling league, and seen a lane pattern graph and not known what in the world you were looking at? I was at a collegiate bowling tournament where lane graphs were given to the teams at check-in and I heard many a team trying to decipher what the lane graphs meant. Over and over, I heard teams trying to decide where to play based on the lane graph. It actually surprised me how many people didn’t know what to look for.
If you are like me, and I know there are many of you out there, when you look at a lane pattern graph, you don’t really know how to extract information from it. Basically, you’re just looking at a picture of a lane or worse, some lane tapes that might as well be written in an ancient language. To help you, I have consulted some of the top minds in pattern theory for a little lesson in how to read and understand the various types of lane graphs.
To begin, we must first understand that there are different types of lane graphs. Some are related to the lane machine program sheet and some are related to the actual oil pattern on the lane.
Calculated from the lane machine settings (the program that is entered into the lane machine), we have the overhead graph and the composite graph. From lane tape readings (taken directly off the lane from the oil itself), we might see the 3D graph or the 2D graph. Each of these graphs look different and provide different ‘views’ of the oil pattern, but ultimately they all give you the same basic information – the shape of the oil pattern.
Some of the information you should look for, regardless of the graph type, is pattern distance, pattern volume, inside/outside ratios (don’t get confused, we’ll discuss) and pattern shape. All of these things will provide clues about what to expect from the oil pattern.
Pattern distance tells you how long (or short) the lane pattern is; in other words, how far down the lane from the foul line the oil is applied. A short pattern will play much different than a long pattern simply because there is longer part of the dry lane to deal with.
Pattern volume tells you how much total oil is applied to the lane. It does not tell you where that volume is; only how much oil is there. The total volume of oil is measured in milliliters and per board values are measured in microliters.
When you see a graph with units as the value, it is a calculated measurement based upon the ultra violet additive (UV) that is mandated to be in each batch of lane oil. The UV additive allows the optical lane reader to “see” the oil. Units of oil should not be confused with volume of oil.
Ratios tell you the difference in the amount of oil from left to center and right to center. Pattern shape is the shape of the oil on the lane. Some examples of shape are top hat, block, Christmas tree, or flat.
The first type of graph we’ll study, the composite graph, is one that most people will see most often. The composite graph is also called a volume per board chart. The composite graph, shown below, gives us the total amount of forward and reverse oil that is applied to the lane. The total amount of applied oil is calculated based on the program that is entered into the lane machine.
In actuality, the composite graph shows us the amount of oil on each board. The best way to understand the composite graph is to imagine taking all of the oil that was applied to the lane, then drag it back to the foul line and stack it up. This would look like the composite graph.
Take a look at the composite graph example below.
Along the bottom, or the ‘x’ axis for you math people, you can see the lane boards labeled; board one on the left to 20 in the center to the one board on the right.
Along the side, or the ‘y’ axis, the amount of oil is measured in micro liters.
This particular example is the composite graph for Dead Man’s Curve, a Sport pattern in the Kegel Navigation Series. Sport Bowling uses ratios to describe (or define) the level of difficulty of a pattern; a lower ratio is more difficult than a higher ratio. The Sport Bowling ratio is defined as the average amount of oil (in units) between boards Left 18 to Right 18 divided by the average amount of oil (in units) between boards R3-R7 & L3-L7, respectively.
While this graph does NOT give us units, nor does it tell us exactly where the ratios are within the oil pattern, it is still a good reference. In this graph, we can see that there is about three times as much conditioner in the middle of program as there is on the left and right side of the program; a 3 to 1 ratio.
The chart area above the graph, which you may or may not see on a composite graph as it depends on how the graph was generated (which computer software program generated the graph), also gives information on ratios in different parts of the pattern program. It may be somewhat difficult to read in this example due to the size of the picture; however, some information about ratios around the track area is given.
The track area is generally defined around the 10-board on either side of the lane (typically a bowler will play the track on a house shot). In this example, ratios are given for outside the track (boards 3-7 on either side of the lane), middle track (boards 8-12 on either side) and inside track (boards 13-17 on either side). In general, the lower the ratio of the oil, the more difficult the pattern will be to play.
In this example, the inside track (boards 13-17) would be very difficult as it is basically flat with a 1:1 ratio whereas the outside track (boards 3-7) would be somewhat easier at a 3:1 ratio. To put the ratios into perspective, a house pattern might be 6:1 or even higher. A high ratio program, like many house patterns are, will give the bowler a defined “ridge” to play against within the oil pattern.
This difference can help you determine how best to play the lane. Don’t misconstrue that; the composite graph can give you an idea of how to play the lane, but a common misconception is that it can tell you where to play the lane. This isn’t always true since the topography of the lane surface can often be more dominant than the oil pattern.
The composite graph is more of an idea of how difficult, or how easy, the oil pattern may play. Again, generally the lower the ratio of conditioner from the inside to the outside, or the flatter the oil pattern, the more challenging the oil pattern will be.
The last things to note in this graph, and they may be difficult to read because of the graph size, are the pattern distance and pattern volume. In this particular example, the pattern distance is 43 feet and the total volume is 24.25 mL.
Since a lane is 60 feet from foul line to head pin, there is 17 feet of ‘dry lane’ after our 43 foot Dead Man’s Curve pattern. That basically means there is 17 feet of friction that the ball must move through before it hits the pins.
We hope this information has helped you understand how to read a Composite Graph. It is important to remember that the information is only as useful as your interpretation. The graph isn’t telling you where to play; it is only providing you with some information to help you make an informed decision regarding lane play.
Next time, we’ll see another type of graph, learn about how to read it, and extract useful information from it. Until then, Happy Bowling!
Breakdown and Carrydown - By The Numbers
In our last Inside Line feature article, Breakdown and Carrydown – Then and Now, we discussed the reasons why breakdown and carrydown are different today. For this edition’s feature article, we will add some data and visuals to support the previous article. The data was taken from the recently concluded European Bowling Tour Masters in Munich, Germany and it shows the same thing we often see in bowling tournaments today.
The event consisted of the top 16 men and women from the 2011 European Bowling Tour point list. On the men’s side there was a mix of styles; high rev players, medium rev players, and low rev players, with fourteen right-handed players and two left-handed players. On the women’s side there was also a good mix of styles, even though most fall into the medium to low rev rate category, with 15 right-handed players and one left-handed player.
The players on the men’s side were: Martin Larsen (RH), Mika Koivuniemi (RH), Karl Wahlgren (RH), Sean Rash (RH), Gery Verbruggen (LH), Dominic Barrett (RH), Perttu Jussila (RH), Syafiq Ridhwan (RH), Osku Palermaa (RH), Mik Stampe (RH), Paul Moor (LH), Dennis Eklund (RH), Jesper Agerbo (RH), Robert Andersson (RH), Thomas Larsen (RH), and Stuart Williams (RH).
The players on the women’s side were: Rebecka Larsen (RH), Clara Guerrero (RH), Mai Ginge Jensen (RH), Krista Pöllänen (RH), Nina Flack (RH), Patricia Luoto (RH), Wendy Kok (RH), Bianca Wiekeraad (LH), Britt Brøndsted (RH), Joline Persson-Planefors (RH), Jacqueline Sijore (RH), Zandra Aziela (RH), Lisanne Breeschoten (RH), Nicole Sanders (LH), Heidi Thorstensen (RH), Sascha Wedel (RH).
The Data and Graphics - Breakdown
The oil pattern used for the event was Kegel’s Navigation Sport Series pattern The Turnpike. This pattern is almost flat from the midlane to the end of the pattern because the forward application consists of only 2L-2R loads. The shape from the mid portion of the oil pattern to the foul line is built on the return pass.
Here is a graphic of the fresh oil pattern with tapes taken at 8’, 22’, 32’ and 39’ (left side of the graphic is the right side of lane, right side of graphic is left side of lane – you are looking at these graphs from the pins perspective):
As we have known for many years, apart from the type of equipment being used, how the oil pattern breaks down is dependent on where the players play on the lane. When styles or rev rates are more similar, players tend to play in a more similar area of the lane, causing a much different type of pattern breakdown than when styles and rev rates are more diverse.
During the EBT Masters, all blocks consisted of 6 games with four players per pair, which equals 12 games per lane, plus ten minutes of practice. In comparison, a five person league would be 15 games per lane, plus 10 minutes of practice.
Here is the graphic of the EBT Masters pattern after one block of play by the women:
Here is the same graphic of the men’s pattern breakdown after one block of play:
You can plainly see (I hope!) that the pattern breaks down significantly different when styles/rev rates are more similar versus when styles/rev rates are more diverse.
Here is a graphic of the before to after bowling between the men players and the women players at each tape distance, 8’, 22’, 32’ and 39’ (fresh oil is behind the after bowling tape):
This graphic clearly shows how the lower rev rate women players “cliff” the oil pattern much more than the men players simply because the women play in a more similar area.
But now comes the interesting part of this breakdown pictorial and data article – the numbers.
What we often track is the oil depletion in percentages from that of the fresh oil pattern. As you will see, the percentages match up to the above graphics. What might surprise you is how much each group depleted. Common thought is high rev players deplete much more conditioner than lower rev players, but is it really so?
Here is the depletion by percentage on the men’s side of the event, with the square boxed area being a guide to show where the greatest depletion took place:
As you can see, the men took off about 40 plus percent at each distance throughout the oil pattern. After about 4 games of play, the right-handed players and the left-handed players came together in the fronts (8 feet) from boards L10 to L15, causing the greater depletion numbers in that area.
Before that move left, the right-handed men players continually moved towards the inside portion of the lane in their lay down area, yet they were still playing to near the same exit part of this 41’ oil pattern, between boards R5 and R11.
So how many units were left in the oil pattern after play? And what area of the depletion caused them to move left?
Here is a graphic of the before, on the left side of the graphic, and after tape data, on the right side of the graphic:
As you can plainly see, at the 8 foot distance of the pattern, after 12 games plus practice there was still over 60 units of oil on the lane. Only when the left-handers and right-handers lay down point became similar did we see the 50 unit barrier get broken, and that was only on a couple boards.
As we pointed out in the last feature article, the depletion towards the end of the oil pattern is what causes players to move left in today’s game, not “the fronts”.
Now the depletion tape data in percentages from the women’s side of the event, and as before, the square boxed area is a guide to show where the greatest depletion took place:
As you can see, because the women’s styles are more similar, as well as their rev rates, this group tends to play in a tighter area of the lane. This causes more depletion than when everyone is spread out all over the lane.
If you notice, the greatest percentage of depletion is at the 32 foot mark. The reason is, for the women players, all shots are starting to come together at this distance and there is more oil in that area than the end of the pattern - more oil equals more change.
Now let’s look at the same graph of the tape data in units of a women’s block after 12 games:
As you can see by this data, the women actually erased more oil off the lane in their lay down area (8’ tape) than the men did, yet still not enough to make the ball hook early, or make them move left because “the fronts have gone away”. The end of the pattern however is once again, another story.
The women have “ganged up” on the exit point of the pattern causing the 10-12 units of fresh oil at 39 feet become 5-6 units by the end of play. At 32 feet, the fresh 25-26 units of oil became 8 units after bowling.
This back-to-front oil pattern breakdown is the cause of the players moving left, not the old school front-to-back oil pattern breakdown we used to have before bowling ball track flare became a dominant force.
Also, to give you an idea how much oil is left on the lane by each group at each tape distance after bowling, here is what the tape data showed as an average amount of units at each tape distance:
- The men players at 8’ had an average of 54.35 units left on the lane, at 22’ an average of 31.73 units, at 32’ an average of 19.93 units, and at 39’ an average of 9.84 units.
- The women players at 8’ had an average of 58.79 units left on the lane, at 22’ an average of 30.79 units, at 32’ an average of 18.60 units, and at 39’ and average of 9.40 units.
Carrydown Data
This next graph and data might surprise some people, although it will make perfect sense once explained. I have been watching this in action over the last few years and it is something as lanemen we have no control over.
During this event we took carrydown tapes of the men and we will show the same percentage graphic as before with an additional twist, the carrydown tape in units. We do this so you can plainly see the exit points within the oil pattern of both the right-handed and the left-handed players.
Here is the graphic with carrydown tape visual (left side is right side of lane, right side of graphic is left side of lane – you are still looking at these graphs from the pins perspective!):
Here is the data, depletion percentages plus carrydown in units of oil:
If we look at the blocks which show where both the left-handed and right-handed players played, you can plainly see how much carrydown is on the left side of the lane at the left-handers exit point of the pattern, yet not so much on the right-handers exit point. Why might you ask?
It is actually very simple once we think about it. We know that most spare balls in use today do not flare much, nor do they soak up oil like high flaring reactive resin strike balls that are in use today. So as right-handed players continually shoot spares on the left side of the lane, these non-flaring non-absorbent spare balls leave those long carrydown strips when they exit the oil pattern.
These ball types also do this when players are shooting spares on the right side of the lane, yet the carrydown tapes clearly do not show as much carry down at the end of the pattern.
The answer lies in the amount of high flaring balls going down the lane on the right side of the lane versus the left side of the lane.
Basically, the right-handers strike balls continually erase the carrydown left by the spare balls, but on the left side of the lane there is simply not enough high flaring absorbent balls going down the lane in that area to erase left side spare ball carrydown.
This lane condition change can be beneficial or detrimental to the left-hander. If these left side carrydown strips become dominate inside of target, like on patterns or conditions that allow the outside of the lane to play, it can give the left-hander hold area.
Yet if these spare ball carrydown strips become dominate left of target, or at their exit point, like many medium long or long patterns, it can result in a hang spot or reduced pin carry.
One more thing to be aware of with spare balls on today high volume oil patterns is how they can actually increase the amount of oil at the end of the oil pattern where high flaring balls are not traveling. We saw this happen often in the late 1980’s even where the traffic was when more aggressive coverstocks and larger core urethane balls were mostly in play. The end of the pattern after a couple blocks often had more oil on it than when fresh. It also shows up often in our after tapes in today’s game outside the track area (where most balls are being rolled), which can clearly be seen on the aforementioned data.
The reason for this today and back then is simple, by the mid to late 1980’s the amount of oil on the lane had to significantly increase in order to give the wood lane protection.
The by-product was more carrydown because more oil was being picked up by the ball in the fronts and re-deposited towards the end of the pattern and the dry back end.
This combination led to a great advantage after a few games by high rev big hook ball players as they could simply go around the carry down for return outside of target, and then the carrydown became hold area inside of target for this type player.
We see the same dominant style trend happening again today but for different reasons – this time it’s rapid depletion of the oil pattern from back to front and who can chase the oil inside of target on the lane the fastest.
Normally today, just like in the late 1980’s, it is often the high rev players who can create the largest margin of error and best angle for the best pin carry once the oil conditions are altered simply by bowling.
After reading all this you might be asking yourself what then is the best combination of ball versus lane versus oil that would minimize all this rapid lane condition change? That my friend is another article for another time…
Breakdown and Carrydown – Then and Now
We hear it all the time; “the heads are hooking”, “carrydown is happening quickly today”, “time to move again”, “my ball’s burning up – grab the fire extinguisher!”...ok maybe not the last one. But with the amount of oil needed in today’s environment in order to protect the lane surface and keep the modern ball from hooking into the gutter at the arrows, rapid and chaotic change is often the result. Even the best of players can get confused in today's game over the course of a few games.
In this month’s piece we'll try and give some sense of order to that chaos, but the first thing many will have to do is let go of what you’ve learned and experienced in the past – today’s pattern mutation, carrydown, and resulting bowling environment is different, very different.
Oil Pattern Change
The first thing we need to understand about oil pattern change is how bowling balls with different amounts of track flare change the oil pattern.
Prior to the 1980’s, when bowling balls did not significantly flare, the ball essentially picked up all the oil it could within the first couple revolutions - the first 8’ to 16’ of the oil pattern. It was in the head area where the oil pattern dried out the most, and after that, the oil pattern basically remained unchanged. Only once we got to a point of about 24 games per lane or more, did the rest of the pattern began to “dry out”.
As lower flaring more aggressive coverstock balls were introduced in the mid to late 1980’s, the amount of oil on the lanes had to increase, and oil pattern mutation changed because of that. John Davis' research showed the latter half of the oil pattern actually increased in volume during this era.
Back then the bowling ball picked up so much oil in the front part of the lane, it re-deposited some of that oil towards the end of the pattern, and then a lot more of that oil on the dry back-end. This is the time when carrydown quickly became a big problem.
When ball manufactures figured out that track flare increased the friction between the ball surface and the lane surface, bowling balls became unbalanced again - only this time it was by way of significant Radius of gyration (Rg) differential, It was then, oil pattern mutation, and the resulting ball motion, changed dramatically.
However, bowler "lingo" hasn't seemed to change as much as pattern mutation has, which can cause a lot of confusion and misinformation in our world of bowling.
Bowling balls with track flare (pictured below far right) pick up and erase oil off the lane with every revolution, causing a much different type of oil pattern breakdown. It’s not just the heads that breakdown down anymore, it’s the entire length of the oil pattern that breaks down, and it begins with the first ball thrown on the oil pattern.
In our research, when starting with 80 units in the front part of the lane, our after tapes show that about half the oil has been depleted during a normal league session, which is 15 games per lane. We see the same trend in high level events bowling 12 games per lane.
That means there are still about 40 units left in the heads, but many in our industry still talk about the “heads hooking”. Anyone want to bowl on a pattern with 40 units on the outsides? Of course you don’t - your ball will never hook! So what causes the players to move left in today’s bowling environment? It’s more about the removal of oil from the mid-lane towards the end of the pattern.
Because of oil pattern taper, the mid and end part of the oil pattern has much less oil than the front part of the oil pattern. As the ball erases the oil off the lane, the modern “mountain range” like coverstock can easily poke through that thin film of oil towards the back part of the pattern. This causes the ball to read the friction much sooner there than in the front part of the pattern, and that is what makes players move left, not the oil pattern breaking down in the heads.
What this flaring ball pattern breakdown does to ball motion is simple – the ball simply slows down sooner and therefore hooks more. For high rev and high ball speed players, this pattern mutation falls right into their wheel house as finesse has been removed from the equation for them - its flat out every shot without having to worry about “throwing it through the break point”.
For rev challenged and slower ball speed players, this pattern mutation becomes more difficult to overcome – their bowling balls slow too early and begin to lose axis rotation too soon causing less room for error and decreased pin carry.
Of course this type player could switch to a less aggressive ball to combat the increased friction towards the end of the pattern, but then that type ball is more susceptible to carrydown. It’s a delicate balance for these styles of players.
Can the heads (the first 16 feet) still give the ball the perception it is hooking early? Sure they can, but in today’s bowling environment, more often than not it’s not because of the lack of oil.
With synthetic lanes it’s normally a side hill slope issue where the ball is thrown into a hill and trying to rotate up that hill. This topography issue will make the ball “check up” or move in the direction of the slope, which is more of a gravity issue, with a bit of friction thrown in for the banked curve affect.
For wood lanes or really old synthetics, it could be a severely roughed up lane surface, which therefore is a friction issue. However no reasonable amount of oil will significantly help in either of these situations simply because the depth of the scratches in the lane surface are deeper than the oil film – resurfacing or re-leveling the lane surface is the only solution to combat that kind of "early hook".
In short, bowling balls that do not flare tend to break an oil pattern down from front-to-back, and today's high flaring balls tend to break down oil patterns from back-to-front.
With high flare balls the oil pattern is literally getting shorter in the ball traffic area with every shot thrown, and by moving left we are increasing our launch angles to that area in order to give the ball more time to hook. Of course when missing inside of target, we are now in a "longer pattern" again so the ball holds pocket. This is why sport and challenge patterns get "easier" and scores often increase after a few games.
Carrydown
Carrydown is also much different by balls that don’t flare versus balls that do flare. Bowling balls that do not flare leave long three to four foot streaks of carrydown beyond the end of the pattern. Because the footprint of the bowling ball is so small, a shot hitting these long streaks of carrydown can all of a sudden make a pattern feel like it is much longer, mainly because to the bowling ball, on that single shot, the oil pattern has become longer!
With the amount in the middle of today's oil patterns, it is not uncommon for those streaks of oil to be in the 5-8 unit range.
As noted before, significant carrydown was not a problem in bowling until the 1980’s - especially towards the middle to end part of the decade. With the advent of ever stronger urethane balls, as well as increased dynamic weight blocks, an increased amount of oil was necessary as more and more customers bought these new balls.
And as players began sanding the covers and using drilling techniques to create more dynamic imbalance, more oil was needed to help protect the lane surface and keep these new higher friction balls on the lane, and of course, keep the customers who bought these new balls happy.
It was only then that we saw carrydown become such a significant part of the playing environment in so few games. Prior to that, when fairly dynamically balanced rubber and polyester balls were mainly in use, there was simply not enough oil needed nor used on the lanes to cause significant carrydown issues.
Sure there was carrydown after a few days of play, when lanes were not cleaned but once a week, but nothing like what happened in the 1980’s to tournament organizations like the PBA Tour, who cleaned the lanes every day.
Carrydown that is created with balls that flare however is much different, as well as how these much more aggressive and diverse internal dynamic balls allow players to play the lanes.
Meaning, because the amount of dynamic imbalance is much greater, this increases the range of available hook and allows players to play the lanes in a much wider area than in the past. When balls were more balanced and didn’t hook as much, everyone played the lanes near the same area, causing a much narrower spread of carrydown.
This dynamic imbalance causes track flare, and track flare creates what are called “bow ties” (where the flare rings come together) at only two points on the balls surface. Those two points are the only parts of the ball with oil on it that touches the lane every revolution.
The higher the differential Rg, the wider the track flare is, and the smaller those touching points are. This in turn creates random 2” to 3” strips of carrydown. For instance, using a 40’ pattern as an example, one track flare carrydown strip may be at 41’ to 41’ 3”, another small strip at 41’ 6” to 41’ 9”, and another one at 42’ to 42’ 3”, etc.
Therefore, when a fresh part of the modern flare balls surface comes in contact with these small strips of carrydown, ball motion is hardly affected at all. As these strips build up however, along with the longer three to four plus foot random strips of carrydown created by the many low flaring spare balls going down the lane, the back-ends will “tighten up” somewhat, but not as soon, or as much, as lanes did in the late 1980’s.
There was a very good article written by the PBA that represents what happened in the late 1980’s. It stated how after a few games of bowling the “fronts go away” and significant carrydown happens beyond the pattern at the balls exit point.
When this occurs, the player who greatly hooks the ball can move left and effectively “go around” the carrydown, creating an increased margin of area from that of a fresher oil pattern, and clean dry back ends. Low flare carrydown gives this style of player hold area inside of target.
On the PBA Tour in the mid to late 1980’s it was not uncommon for big hook ball players to average 20-30 pins a game more in the evening blocks versus the morning blocks.
Today however, even though high rev and high ball speed players can often struggle right out of the gate because their ball motion is too “skid-snappy” on the fresh, with today’s expeditious pattern breakdown, and high friction balls, high rev players can hit their stride much sooner. Today it doesn’t take more than a couple games to “smooth out” their ball motion from front to back.
In addition, as we stated before, carrydown at the end of the pattern with high flaring balls is not as defined as it was in the 1980’s, or when lower flaring urethane balls were in use. Therefore today there is simply not enough defined carrydown to go around and use as hold area.
High rev players tend to get their advantage today more from rapid pattern breakdown towards the mid and end part of the pattern, not carrydown. As most know, low to non-flaring balls today are most often regulated to shooting spares and therefore, those long strips of carrydown are more random across the lane surface - sometime you’ll hit a strip, and sometimes you won’t.
Remember, today you must think different. No longer are we using non-flaring balls on less than 5 milliliters of solvent based lane conditioner like we did in the 1970’s. No longer are we using low flaring balls on 12 milliliters of oil with massive carrydown like we did in the mid to late 1980’s. No longer are we bowling on lanes that are resurfaced every year like was mandated until deletion of the rule. No longer is levelness being maintained regularly like we did prior to advent of synthetic lanes.
The bowling environment today is much more varied, much more complex, and does not always make sense, or play “how it’s supposed to play”.
The best piece of advice we can give you is what the late great PBA National Tour tournament director Harry “Goose” Golden use to say to the players after every roll call; “bowlers, let your ball be your guide”.
JJ's Blog - 2012 Team USA Trials
Saturday December 31st
The alarm went off at 2:45 am. It was an early one but it was easy to get up because I was heading to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas to bowl the Team USA Trials. I’m an early-airport-guy so I like to be at the gate like 90-120 minutes before my flight. Since my flight was at 7:30am, that would get me to the airport to about 5:00am. I got up a little extra early just so I could go through my checklists to make sure I had everything.
I got to the airport at 5am and had a quick and painless check-in and run through security. I sat in the Delta Sky Club for about an hour and a half and then went to the gate. We boarded on time and everything was going as planned. I was supposed to get to Los Angeles at 10am and was going to spend the day shopping and also going to this cupcake place in North Hollywood that makes the best cupcakes. I wanted to share some of these with a few of my friends that were going to be bowling the tournament next week.
For those of you that don’t know me real well I have a real passion for two things: Clothes and chocolates/cookies/pastries/any kind of sweets.
We sat at the gate until about 8am when the pilot got on and said that they were having trouble with the fuel pump and they were having the mechanics come out and look at the plane so at this time we didn’t know how long it was going to take. Mind you, this plane just arrived from LA about 6:30am, so all they were doing was basically topping off the tank and cleaning it up and it was heading straight back to LA.
About 8:20am they were letting people de-plane but told them to check in to the gate every 10 minutes to make sure all was ok because when the plane was ready, we were leaving ASAP. About 8:35am the pilot said we were ready to go and at 8:45am we were all boarded. Well, 5 minutes went by, then 10 minutes, and then at 9am the pilot got back on the PA and said that the fuel pump was still not working and we were going to be re-routed because he had no idea how long this was going to take.
Next thing I knew that I was getting rerouted to Atlanta and my itinerary said I was going to get to LA about 6:40pm!
Since this was New Year’s Eve, most of the stores I wanted to shop at were going to be closed by 6 and when I called the cupcake place they were going to close around 5pm or maybe a little later depending on business and they were going to be closed on New Year’s Day, so it looked like my window for cupcakes was closing. This had all of the makings of a really bad day.
I got to Atlanta and I got on standby for the 1:20pm flight that was going to get into LA at 3:20pm. Fortunately, I got on! Things were looking up all of a sudden!
I got to LA at 3pm (even better) but since I flew on standby my luggage didn’t make it. That wasn’t a big deal since I was staying right across the street from LAX. The lady in baggage service said my bags were on the way to Salt Lake City and then LA and they should be there tonight. Well since I was there early, I got to the rental car place and off I went. I left the airport at 3:30pm and I was only about 30 minutes from the cupcake store. Since the guy I spoke to said that they were closing at 5pm, I should’ve had enough time to get a few cupcakes.
I got to the cupcake place at 4pm only to find a note on the door saying that they had already sold out of their inventory and they would be re-opening on Monday.
Happy New Year! Well isn’t that just flippin’ great! Cupcakes…..denied!
Since I was a little peeved about that I headed to Beverly Hills to do a little clothes shopping. It was about 25 minutes from North Hollywood to the “Hills”. I stopped at this one store on Melrose Avenue and looked around but found nothing I liked despite the sale that was going on. I then headed off to Rodeo Drive and got there right at 5pm. With my good fortune continuing, I found out that all of the stores on Rodeo closed at 5pm on New Year’s Eve as well as Neiman Marcus on Wilshire Blvd., the one department store I REALLY wanted to see today. Stay Hot!
Fortunately Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York were still open as they weren’t closing until 7pm. I spent about a little more than an hour shopping at both stores, but still found nothing I liked. This was turning into a really bad day. What made it worse is Rodeo Drive is also closed on New Year’s Day. I found that out last year as the Team Trials were basically on the same week and I flew out New Year’s Day last year just to find out Rodeo Drive was shut down. So far, no cupcakes for me or my friends and only about 15% of the shopping done that I wanted to get done. This day has definitely been “no bueno” so far.
Being now about 6:30pm and being quite hungry I grabbed a quick bite at the Grill on the Alley and went to go check into the room. I first had to go back to the rental car facility because when I looked closer at my rental agreement they screwed up the coupon I was using for a free day at the end of the rental. It just keeps getting better.
After clearing up that mess, I got to the hotel about 7:15pm and my luggage still hadn’t arrived. Stay red hot!
The one thing that I did have to look forward to was my good friend Missy Parkin invited me to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by her friend Scott Norton at his mother’s house. After the day I’ve had so far, I really needed something to go right considering I was denied cupcakes, didn’t do hardly any shopping and didn’t have any luggage. I didn’t want to sit in the room and think about how the day went, so I got showered and headed to their party which was about an hour from my hotel. I got there about 8:45pm and stayed until about 12:30am. I had a GREAT time as we talked, played some Password and ate some really good food. I got back to the hotel about 1:30am and lo and behold my luggage arrived! Woo-hoo! Things finally were looking up today. Well actually it was already Sunday, but it was a good way to sleep on a high note.
Sunday January 1st
I headed out about 8am to the Desert Hills Premium Outlets. It was about a 2 hour drive from LAX since the outlets were over near Palm Springs. I got there with no problems but I spent an hour there and still found nothing I liked. The bad part was the one store that I REALLY wanted to go see…….closed…..permanently. So far I was 0 for 3 on the shopping establishments, however I did get a nice ice cream cone at Haagen-Dazs which helped relieve some of my retail distress.
Since I found nothing there I made the 4 ½ hour trek to Vegas since practice session was on Monday. I was going to stop at the Outlets at Primm, NV but when I got there I figured that would be a really BAD idea.
Being New Year’s Day and around 3pm at this time, a lot of the people from LA who drove to Vegas for New Year’s Eve were heading home…….I mean…….A LOT of people were heading home. I could see at times on the southbound lanes on I-15 there were stretches where the traffic was backed up for miles. As I got closer to the exit for Primm where the outlets were at, I could see all the cars backed up on the road underneath the overpass and how they were backed up at the couple of gas stations on the southeastern corner of the exit ramp. I realized this would be a bad idea if I tried to get off so I kept going.
When I passed the overpass for the exit I noticed the southbound exit ramp (as well as the other three lanes) was backed up for about a mile and a half. It was a good call on my part since it probably would’ve taken me an extra 15 minutes to get in and probably another 20 minutes to get out, however that made me 0 for 4 on shopping. I hope the bowling goes better because the shopping has pretty much sucked so far.
I went straight to the City Center and looked around and then went to the Fashion Show Mall and then to the Forum Shops at Caesars’ Palace. I did find a nice shirt at the Forum Shops and a nice tie at the Fashion Show Mall. The shirt and tie were 60% and 70% off respectively so it was a big score to end the day. After grabbing a bite to eat at one of my favorite restaurants in the Forum Shops (Spago), I headed to Texas Station to go check into the room and call it a night.
Monday January 2nd
I woke up about 7am and spent a little time riding the stationary bike at the hotel because my right hamstring was a little tight. I felt it the night before at the end of the day and I thought if I slept on it, it would be a little better in the morning. Well……I was wrong. After about 30 minutes on the bike I felt a little better, so I went out to Panera Bread and got some breakfast. I noticed there was a cupcake store in the same plaza that Panera was in. They opened in like 15 minutes so I stuck around and grabbed a couple. They were pretty good. The day was starting off pretty well.
I came back to the room about 8:30am and then took a shower. I then left about 9:30am with Jessica Baker to go pick up Diandra Asbaty and her son Madden at the airport who was getting in about 10:30am. I made a quick stop to the Forum Shops on the way to pick up some unbelievable chocolate chip cookies at a restaurant called Max Brenner’s that I discovered the night before and then we went to go pick up Dee.
After picking her and Madden up I then made a quick trip to my good friend David Haynes’ pro shop to pick up a case of balls I had shipped there (Thanks Dave!) and then headed back to Texas Station to get ready for the one and a half hour practice session.
The practice session went well but the 90 minutes went really quick. Texas Station is 60 lanes and since we were bowling on 4 patterns over the next 4 days, they had all the patterns spread throughout the center in blocks of 14-16 lanes.
When you’ve got 13 bowling balls with you for all different patterns and you’re trying to practice on all of the patterns, it takes a little bit of time just switching bowling balls from one bag to another and then walking to one end of the house and then back to get bowling balls for another pattern and then walking back, etc. You lose quite a few minutes of practice session just walking back and forth in a 60 lane center and switching equipment from one bag to another.
I felt pretty good on all of the patterns though. Afterward we had orientation and then I went back to the Strip for some shopping and some food. Tonight was back to City Center where I had a nice Mushroom Pizza at Wolfgang Puck’s Cucina at the Crystals Mall. I found a couple of shirts I liked but they didn’t have my size, so that made me at about 2 for 7 now on shopping malls. I’m only batting a little under .300, but not too bad. At least that’s good on my wallet. The tournament begins tomorrow so I headed back to the room about 9pm and was out by 10pm.
Tuesday January 3rd
Today the tournament begins. We are going to be bowling on the 39’ Seoul pattern. This week we’re bowling on all WTBA patterns.
The pattern schedule will be as follows:
Tuesday: 39’ Seoul
Wednesday: 47’ Paris
Thursday: 34’ Stockholm
Friday: 45’ Mexico City
The Team USA Trials is also a little different this year in a couple of ways. First, we’re only bowling 7 games a day instead of last year’s 9. Also, this year’s champion will be determined by points and not total pinfall. Basically if you lead the squad by total pins, you get one point. If you’re second in total pinfall you get 2 points. If you’re third you get three points and so on down the line.
So, the person with the LEAST amount of points over 4 days is the Team USA Trials champion, the 2nd least amount of points is 2nd, and so on. It’s supposed to reward the player who is the most consistent on all 4 days which is definitely a trait of a great bowler: Versatility. The player who is really good at one pattern but mediocre/sub-par on another will definitely stick out in this format.
The day really wasn’t a real good day. My ball roll didn’t really match up too well and I was slow on reading a few transitions. Texas Station has a little more early hook than the lanes at Sunset Station (which has hosted the Team USA Trials for the last 3 years). Since my ball roll reads the fronts a lot naturally, this isn’t a real good combination for good ball motion when they break down, which started for me in game 3. I felt like I threw the ball well overall, but being a little behind on transitions kind of hurt me. I thought the scoring pace was going to be a little lower so I wasn’t quite as aggressive when I had to move inside the track and needed to start opening up the lane a little more. I was trying to “trap” the ball just inside the track from games 3-5 instead of just moving deeper and really trying to open it up. I only went +68 for 7 games which put me in 39th place for the day, especially not good considering I was +72 for the first 2 games.
I figured one point for every year that I’m old will not be acceptable for the rest of the tournament. I was kind of depressed as I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make up that many points considering this is the first time they’ve used this points system. I went back to the Forum Shops and drowned my sorrows on another Smoked Salmon Pizza at Spago and more cookies at Max Brenner’s. I knew though……..tomorrow was going to be new day.
Wednesday January 4th
Today we were bowling on the 47’ Paris. I started out the first game with a pretty good line to the pocket but I think my ball was still burning up a little quick and not getting into a roll down the lanes as I never missed the pocket for 218. I think the Rapid Fire Pearl I was using was probably flaring a little too much combined with my ball roll reading the fronts too much. I tried switching balls to an Anarchy and that wasn’t much better ball motion-wise though I did manage to shoot 230 somehow. I then switched to a Mission X in game 3 and since that flared a little less but still had a strong cover it got through the fronts and rolled through the pins much better. Now I was able to do some striking.
From here I was just trying to chase it left and stay ahead of the moves. The 6th game I was getting a little too deep as I was starting to get the big wet-dry from side to side as I was shooting a 200 game which wasn’t very good with par being around 225. I tried to move back right on the fill ball and use loft so I could keep the ball on line as I knew that if I stayed where I was at I was only going to shoot another 200 game which wasn’t going to cut it at the scoring pace that was set. It looked like it would work based on the fill ball, I just needed to move a little farther left with the same Mission X. Lo and behold, it worked! 268 to finish the day!
That put me at 7th place for the day which moved me up from 39th to 16th in the standings. Things were looking up for tomorrow for the short pattern, which has either been really good or really bad for me the last few years in this tournament.
Went back to the Crystals Mall at City Center and grabbed a pizza and some chocolates to take back for later. I then went to use Kaitlin Mayall’s ball spinner to do some ball work (Thanks Kaitlin!) and then called it a night.
Thursday January 5th
I brought two urethane balls with me to combat the short. I figured if anything it will give me more control and get me around the pocket until I see how the scoring pace is going to be and then go from there. It sounded like a solid game plan going in.......however……..then we started bowling, haha!
I think the combination of the early roll of the urethane balls, the early hook built into the surface and my roll which reads the fronts too much as it is…..was a bad combination. I shot 203 the first game which wasn’t terrible but not up to pace. I had trouble keeping it on line when I went direct but the ball had trouble cornering when I gave it some room.
After 4 frames of the next game only hitting the pocket twice with one open, I realized that urethane wasn’t cutting it. Since the loft worked out really well the last game yesterday, I thought I’d try that again. It made sense since it would help eliminate some of the early roll my release naturally gets since the ball won’t hook in the air, haha!
I switched to pretty strong bowling balls and between the same Mission X and Rapid Fire Pearl I used yesterday, I shot +204 the last 5 to vault me to 6th place in the standings for the day which shot me to 4th place overall.
It was a good day so it was time to back to the Strip at the Forum Shops at Caesars. I went with my good friend Katie Thornton to have a meal at the Cheesecake Factory and more of those good cookies at Max Brenner's and walked over to the Bellagio and bought some really good pastries at the Jean Philippe Patisserie. I brought those back to the hotel and Katie and I shared the pastries with Kaitlin Mayall and her Dad while she let me use her ball spinner again (Thanks again Kaitlin!) to prepare surfaces for the Mexico City pattern the next day.
Friday January 6th
This pattern is on paper one of the most difficult in the WTBA series. It has the potential to be pretty ugly so I felt like I kind of needed to play smart on the fresh and not try to “swing for the fences” so to speak. I was fortunate shooting 256 the first game out of the box. I threw a Red Mission playing between 10-13 really straight and had a good look. I also had the good fortune of tripping a 2-pin, a Brooklyn and a “trip 3-9” for a 5-bagger, but I took every one of them because goodness knows I might need them later. Sadly, I was really going to need them later.
I shot 196 the next game which I was still in good shape but as we made the turn to the low end I could see that there actually was some ball reaction developing between 20 and 25. After 4 frames of really bad ball reaction (and seeing some strikes from a fair amount of other people) I knew it was time to move inside. I went to the Mission X and it was the right ball but it took me a few frames to get lined up and combining that with another open frame I shot 176. I got lined up and shot 223 the next game but the next few games were a struggle. I was slipping on the approach which was resulting in a half a game of adjusting slide soles and heels and I was also seeing that my ball roll really wasn’t right.
I’m a fair amount up the back of the ball and I see that I needed more tilt and more rotation but with a softer hand. All the guys that were bowling well had that. I can get more rotation, but my tilt is still low so that makes my ball read earlier which forces me farther left which is part of the problem since I’m already about 5 boards too far left to begin with. I can get more tilt, but not with a soft enough hand. My ball roll forces me farther left (because it rolls sooner) so I get less hold when I miss in and when I get it to the right (since it burns up earlier) it doesn’t roll through the pins the right way thus it doesn’t strike as much. I’ve been fighting this all week, but it was magnified today on this pattern.
It was a disappointing way to finish with (2) 170 games in the last 3 games and that put me 35th for the day and 6th place overall. From here I needed to get picked for the Team since only the top 3 spots were automatically on the Team.
Fortunately, I got picked but I realized that I needed to work on developing this softer hand with more rotation and more tilt. That’s going to be one of the first things I’ll be working on when I get home. We had Team USA Orientation that night and then I went to get a bite to eat afterward even though it was near 10pm at that point. Overall, it was a week with some ups and downs but in the end it all turned out good. Looking forward to a good year on Team USA!
Saturday January 7th
I took Diandra, her son Madden, Jessica Baker and Jazreel Tan to the airport in the morning and then it was back to the hotel to check out and then back to Los Angeles for a couple of days of R & R. I met with Missy Parkin for lunch at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa (nice call on the fish tacos at Wahoo’s!) and then went to Beverly Hills for some shopping on Rodeo. I didn’t buy anything at either place, but it was just good to walk around and relax. It was a reasonably low-stress day ending with a nice juicy “Double-Double” cheeseburger at In-N-Out.
Sunday January 8th
I met up with my cousin who lives in Santa Monica in the morning and we spent most of the day together with her and her boyfriend. We did some shopping and lunch at the 3rd Street Promenade, watched the NFL playoff games at their house and then went to a few cupcake stores that were right nearby. Los Angeles is big on cupcake stores….my kind of town.
Speaking about cupcakes, I wanted to go back to the cupcake store that I wanted to go to originally the weekend before that closed early. I saw on their website that they were open until 8pm on Sunday. I thought to myself……Perfect! I’ll get there about 6pm and I’ll get some cupcakes to bring back. I said goodbye to my cousin about 5:45pm and then got to the cupcake store in North Hollywood about 6:15pm.
I get there…….and they’re closed! There’s a sign on the door saying that they close at 6pm on Sunday, but their freaking website says they’re open until 8pm on Sunday.
Ironically, this trip ended the exact way it started. Fortunately I bought a few cupcakes from one of the other stores in Santa Monica so I had some cupcakes to take home for my friends, but not the ones I REALLY wanted. It was then off to the airport to catch the 10:50pm red-eye flight and back to work on Monday morning.
At least the bowling part went well. :-)))
Fine Tuning your House League Pattern
This is the time of year when new seasons have begun and pattern decisions are being put to the test. You’ve made your choice, laid out the pattern, and now things aren’t going exactly as planned. You’ve verified that your machine is in perfect working order, now what do you do?
Once the bowlers take to the lane, lots of problems can come to light. If a majority of your bowlers are experiencing the same problem, it may be time to make adjustments to the pattern. Common complaints could be: too much carrydown, back ends too strong, not enough hold area, heads hooking, no swing, track dries up too quickly, or no taper. How do you trouble-shoot your pattern and fine-tune it to get the ideal conditions for this year’s league? Here are some tips for common problems with patterns which should help you make proper adjustments.
Too Much Carrydown
Too much conditioner at the end of the pattern can cause excessive carrydown. This can be rectified by not loading as far down lane on the forward pass or increasing the machines buff out speed, which decreases the amount of conditioner on the lane towards the end of the pattern.
If your machine has our reverse brush drop feature, this is another fine tune adjustment you can make to bring the amount of conditioner farther back towards the foul line, or limit the amount of conditioner towards the end of the pattern. Poor cleaning can also cause carrydown issues. This can come from an incorrect mixture of cleaner or improper machine performance. It can never hurt to double check to make sure your machine is cleaning properly. To do this, perform a clean-only run on a few lanes and see if all the conditioner and cleaner are removed from each lane.
Back Ends Are Too Strong
Lengthen the pattern or create more taper to tone down the back end reaction. Tamer back ends provide predictable ball reaction and make spare shooting much easier.
Different types of cleaner provide different back end motions; this is another “condition” adjustment you can try. You could also experiment with a weaker ratio of cleaner to water mixture, but be careful; there is a fine line between getting the lane clean, and not clean enough.
Not Enough Hold Area
Make no mistake about it, as much as bowlers think they like swing area, what creates the highest scoring environment is hold area. The hold area is created by the amount of shape in the pattern towards the end as well as some friction outside of target. Without both, it is just about impossible to have the other.
If your lane machine has reverse oiling capabilities, starting the reverse oil loads farther down the lane will help increase hold without fear of getting too much conditioner at the end of the pattern, which as we said before, can cause carrydown issues.
Lane topography can increase hold area, a side slope away from the pocket at the break point area for instance, but topography can also minimize hold area if the side slope is towards the pocket at the break point area. Before you start searching for hold area by way of the oil pattern, get to know your lanes to make sure your lanes will allow the type of shot you are searching for.
Heads are “Hooking”
The amount of oil in the lay down area, or a lane surface in poor condition, can cause the heads to hook. In both instances, the lane machine should run slower in the heads, 10 or 14 inches per second on Kegel machines. The slower the machine travels, the more brush strokes per distance traveled which increases the amount of conditioner to any one area. This is better controlled on the return oil due to the direction of travel and the rotation of the buffer brush. Apply oil loads during the return travel that finish closer to the foul line (but not less than 4 feet).
Another thing that will give the perception that the heads are hooking is when the lay-down point of the bowling ball is on the upslope of severely depressed heads. No amount of oil in the world can fight a significant gravity influence towards the headpin in this situation.
No Swing Area
The amount of oil on the outside boards or adverse lane topography can affect swing area. Reducing the length of your oil pattern, or decreasing the amount of the applied oil on the outside boards, will increase the amount of swing area. But be cautious, even though bowlers like to swing the ball, your lanes just may not allow that to happen with the success you, and they, are looking for. Just know, however, our highest scoring patterns are the ones where most styles can go up the lane and have hold area.
A recent example is the 2011 WTBA Women's World Championship where many scoring records were set on the 47' Paris oil pattern. Note: the 2011 version of the Paris pattern tapes out at 4.2:1 at 22', so be aware if you try and use this in your Sport Bowling league.
Another example of a high scoring pattern is our Kegel Navigation Challenge pattern Route 66. This 45’ pattern routinely outscores many higher ratio shorter recreation patterns.
If you have topography issues, or side slopes that go towards the outside portion of the lane, the pattern should be adjusted by stacking up your inside oil line, applying conditioner farther towards the end on the forward and reverse passes, and allow the bowlers to play a more direct line to the pocket. This should create more area where ball reaction is concerned on a longer pattern.
Another topographic issue that can decrease swing area is depressed heads. Depressed heads cause the ball to quickly lose energy which makes down lane recovery (swing area) very difficult no matter how little oil you apply to the outside boards, or how much you apply to the heads.
Track Area Dries Up Too Quickly
Many bowling centers do not apply enough oil to the mid-lane track area on both the forward and return passes. Applying oil to the track on the return pass can help provide more longevity and stability without drastically affecting the forward oil readings and ball motion at the end of the oil pattern. Another adjustment is widening your pattern slightly. As balls hook more, the track area is becoming wider and farther down-lane. Take your middle loads and try widening them out a board or two and see if this adjustment gives you more longevity to your track area.
No Taper to My Pattern
The easiest way to create taper in the pattern is to make adjustments to your lane machine’s drive speeds during the forward pass only. Increasing the drive speeds on your forward run towards the end of the pattern will apply less oil in that area which increases front to back taper.
If your machine has Kegel's reverse brush drop capability, dropping the buffer brush farther back into the pattern on the reverse pass can also give you more front to back taper within your pattern.
Conclusion
With these tips, tricks, and troubleshooting techniques, you should be able to tweak your pattern and make it playable for most of your league bowlers. However, even with excellent lane conditions, you may still not be able to please everyone. If you reach the point where the majority of the bowlers are happy and bowling well, then it may be time to leave the lanes alone.
As always, it is important to remember that the pattern is not the only factor contributing to your lane conditions. You are competing against the lane topography, the other bowlers who share the lane, and Mother Nature herself. With topography, we cannot stress enough how important it is for you to know the shape of your lanes. When that information is known, finding that right oil pattern for your center is much easier. Without it, it's just a trial and error exercise.
Bowling is about skills and technique, but it is also about versatility and one’s ability to read the lanes and make adjustments to account for those factors which are out of your control.
Warning: Managing lane conditions may result in the loss of sanity. If it occurs, please contact our free Kegel Tech Support at (800) 280-2695 and we’ll help you get it back.
Oil Pattern Depletion
Oil pattern depletion (breakdown) is much different with today’s high flaring balls versus the low flaring balls of the past. Oil pattern depletion also happens much quicker and much more with today’s bowling balls.
When bowling balls had essentially balanced weight blocks, or differential Rg values of .010” or less, the ball basically rolled over the same place every revolution. When this happens, the ball picks up all the oil it can within the first couple revolutions and oil pattern depletion only happens in the head area, or only in the first 16’. The rest of the oil pattern remained intact, but not with today’s high differential Rg weight blocks.
Most bowling balls today have differential Rg values in the .040” to .060” range. The maximum differential Rg value is now .060”, according to USBC specifications. These high differential Rg values create a dynamic imbalance within the bowling ball. When a ball is drilled to maximize this imbalance, this causes track flare and results in the bowling ball rotating on a fresh part of the cover every revolution. This erases oil off of the lane every revolution, causing oil pattern depletion throughout the entire length of the oil pattern, instead of only the heads as when bowling balls were more dynamically balanced.
Kegel performs many tournaments every year and one of the things we are constantly measuring is oil pattern depletion. We do this because the main goal for the laneman in tournaments is to try and create a playing condition that has the best opportunity for fair play; in other words, give as many styles a chance as possible. If massive oil pattern change continues to make this task difficult, we need to find ways to help Lanemen do their job better.
How much oil is erased with today’s balls?
During a recent seminar tour, we got a group of bowlers’ together and measured oil depletion after 10 minutes of practice, and then every three games of play. At the end of this test, we had 9 games per lane. To put it in comparison, a 5 person team bowling a 3 game league has 15 games per lane.
To follow are the results of that test:
The greatest amount of depletion occurs during the early stages of play because the ball creates a larger footprint within the oil pattern. In the head area, there were 80 units of oil before bowling. After 9 games, there were about 35 units in that same head area. The move left by the players was not the lack of head oil; it was the ‘spark point’ being reached in the mid lane and the back part of the pattern causing the ball to hook more and forcing the players left.
Now we show why this massive depletion of the oil pattern can affect fair play. The following graphics are a comparison on how different styles of players break down oil patterns.
The event was the 2009 European Bowling Tour Masters featuring the top 16 players, men and women, from the 2008 European Bowling Tour point list. Both groups had 3 bowlers per pair and they played 8 games. So the lanes had 12 games per lane plus 10 minutes of practice on them. There was also an equal amount of lefties and righties on both the men’s side and the women’s side, and every player bowled on each pair of lanes twice within the block, so it was a very good comparison.
The fresh oil pattern was 44’ in length with the same pattern used for both the men and women. Below is the graphic of that pattern:
The first depletion example is the women’s side of the event. They were bowling by themselves and as with most lower rev players, because of the decreased motion on the back end, these type players tend to play in the same area on the lane and in a tighter line to the pocket.
As you can see in the above graphic, the women essentially started at the slope of the oil pattern, the rise from the least amount of conditioner to the greatest amount of conditioner, and broke the oil pattern down in a very logical manner. When oil patterns are broken down this way, scoring pace can increase greatly.
The men played on lanes right next to the women players. Here we had players like Jason Belmonte, Osku Palermaa, Dominic Barrett, and several Scandinavian players with fairly high rev rates. Below is the graphic of how the men broke that same fresh oil pattern down.
Because of the great amount of potential hook we have in the game today, and especially with the higher rev players, the slope of the oil pattern is not always followed as it used to be when bowling balls hooked less.
What is interesting, is the area where the bowling balls roll throughout the pattern, both groups depleted the same amount; over 60%. Testing has shown depletion is not significantly greater with higher rev rates, depletion is only more spread out. Towards the end of the pattern where all balls meet, both groups depleted the same amount, over 60%.
Here is the tape data and depletion percentages at comparable distances throughout the above patterns.
Most bowlers still believe “the heads” breakdown the most and therefore affect ball motion the greatest. This was the case with balls that did not flare, but that’s not the case with balls that flare.
When flaring balls are rolled over an oil pattern, the oil pattern is erased near the same amount,percentage wise, from the lay down point to when the ball exits the end of the oil pattern. The most oil is depleted where the footprint is the greatest, but at each distance, the percentage of depletion is essentially the same.
Once the oil pattern is depleted enough for the ball to reach the “spark point” in the mid lane and back part of the pattern, players start moving inside. And they move until the modern practice of lofting the gutter cap comes into play.
If depletion continues to happen at such a rapid rate, lofting could become the modern way to play the game. After all, we have yet to see a ball hook while it is in the air.
Earl Anthony - Simply the Best
THE difference between the good players, the very good players, and the great players, is the mental game. But what exactly is this mysterious thing called the "mental game”?
Many of the good players and very good players possess similar physical talents to the great players, but they often fall short with their accomplishments.
Simply put, the physical game - in any sport - is how the athlete performs based on their overall talent, ability, potential, skills, and preparation. The mental game however is a totally different animal. This element of the "package" is HOW the athlete thinks.
We have all heard about how the great players are the ones who work the hardest. They are the first ones to practice, and the last ones to leave. But, there is a lot more to it than that. Desire, dedication, determination, self-control, focus, concentration, confidence, self-esteem, positive thinking, goals, visualization, knowledge, and a host of other things, must be mastered.
The following is how the late great Earl Anthony “mastered” the game of bowling.
One time Earl Anthony was being interviewed after one of his early victories by a reporter. It was in the early 1970's, and the reporter wanted to be controversial about the lefty-righty situation that had run rampant in the late 1960's. He said to Earl, "This victory establishes you as one of the best lefties on Tour. Are you happy with that assessment?" Earl looked him right in the eye and said, "I don't know anything about that, my goal is to be the best bowler."
There was another time I remember that showed exactly how the man thought. It was 1974 and he had just been named the Bowler of the Year. A press party was arranged and the award was being presented to him in his office. The wall was cleared and the photographer was going to take a picture of Earl putting up the plaque. Earl was standing toward the corner of the wall with the plaque, and someone in the crowd told him to “put the plaque in the center of the wall.” Earl replied, “No, this one is going here, and the rest of them will go across the wall.”
Earl was right, the other Five Bowler of the Year Awards eventually filled up the entire wall.
Previously, I had written a series of books called the “Final Phase”. They were instructional books to help bowlers learn about the great sport of bowling.
For one of these books I interviewed Earl and posed this question this question to him; "Earl, in my opinion, you were the greatest bowler in the world. You totally dominated the PBA Tour for more than ten years. What do you feel was the formula-for-success that you enjoyed?”
Earl’s answer was, "In my opinion, success is the result of hard work, dedication, intelligence, selfishness, and some luck. How hard you work, and how much you are willing to sacrifice to achieve your goals, will determine to a great degree your level of success.
Natural talent is a wonderful gift, and to be the very best you must have a lot of God-given talent. However, you must work hard to develop that talent.”
Earl continued on to say, “To be a winner also takes a strong mind. You must be able to focus your concentration level to a fine point, and achieve a level of confidence in your ability that is unshakable under the most extreme pressure. Most winners develop an air of arrogance, which is a by-product of the confidence that they have in their ability.
The reason I was successful, was my ability to understand and develop my mental game, as well as the endless hours of practice on my physical game. There was also a certain amount of fear-of-failure that was tempered by a small degree of courage that I used as a motivator to let me continue to fight for my goals, despite many setbacks, and a willingness to put bowling, and my desire to be the very best, above all other things in my life."
Those three interviews alone, tells you volumes about why I thought Earl was the very best. To this day I still get chills and goose bumps when I read them.
Dual Oil Patterns are here! What’s next?
The European Bowling Tour has recently announced it will have two tournaments in the 2009 schedule where players will compete on dual oil patterns. Following the lead of Ronald Dol and Luc Jensen, organizers of the EBT Hammer Bronzen Schietspoel Tournament which will use dual oil patterns for the third year in a row, the Brunswick Aalborg International will also be contested on dual oil patterns for the second straight year.
Although dual oil patterns have been a mainstay of international championship competition for the last several years, most other high level singles events still use a single oil pattern, but times are changing.
Even the 2008-09 PBA Tour season is testing the waters with an event that utilizes six different oil patterns and another event will employ dual oil patterns on each pair during the PBA Match Play Championship in Norwich, CT.
The format of the recently concluded PBA National Bowling Stadium Championship followed past Foundation Games, the WTBA World Ranking Masters, the EBT Masters and the ETBF European Champions Cup.
In all those events, one qualifying block is played on a short oil pattern and the other qualifying block is played on a long oil pattern. During the match play rounds, all games are played on pairs where every left lane is conditioned with the long oil pattern and every right lane conditioned with the short oil pattern.
How did this all come about?
There are two major reasons why dual oil patterns came into existence. One seemingly clear but not so obvious reason is the technological advancement of the modern lane machine. In the not so distant past, conditioning bowling lanes was done by hand or by machines that could only condition the lane. The challenge however was the time consuming cleaning of bowling lanes. Today’s combination lane machines can consistently condition and clean a bowling lane in less than two minutes making it possible for dual oil pattern events to become a reality.
The other and most significant reason is a group of people came together with a vision and were not afraid to depart from status quo. In the year 2000, then WTBA President PS Nathan called for a World Symposium in Malaysia to address many of the perceived problems related to the sport of bowling.
Out of that symposium, which included the likes of Sid Allen, Tom Kouros, John Davis, Len Nicholson, the late Bill Wasserberger along with other highly respected people in bowling, the WTBA Technical Committee concluded “that a single oil pattern format was unfair, since it overly favored a particular style of play regardless of how the lane was oiled.”
During that same symposium, the WTBA Technical Committee also felt the question of “who is the best bowler” needed to be examined further. Through much discussion and digging deeper into the question, the WTBA defined what they feel are the most important traits that should make up a World Class bowler.
The committee agreed to and created the synonym V-PARK which stands for; Versatility, Power, Accuracy, Repeatability and Knowledge. There was one trait however that was at the very top of every members list, Versatility.
The Technical Committee felt that “the ability to bowl over a wide range of conditions elevated a player from one of quality to that of greatness” and therefore led to the conclusion “that WTBA’s present oiling procedures were not conducive to identifying and rewarding great players, but instead only identified specialists.”
Then committee member Craig Woodhouse suggested the concept of multiple oil patterns and it was unanimously agreed that this would be the standard for all future World Championships.
From where does it go from here?
There is no question that every winner of a dual oil pattern event has garnered the respect of their peers for that week’s competition. It would be reaching pretty far for anybody to say “so-and-so” only won because “they matched up” to both oil patterns. In that regard, the WTBA Technical Committee’s vision about versatility held true but that doesn’t mean dual oil patterns doesn’t have it detractors.
There is no debating the fact that airlines have decreased the allowable weight limits and travel by way of air has been a challenge for the modern bowler. Automobile travel has even been impacted by the modern game and the number of bowling balls competitors need, or feel like they need, to travel to any one tournament even in single oil pattern events.
So one can only imagine that one of the more common negatives of these dual oil pattern events is the perception that the players need to travel to tournaments with an increased amount of equipment to combat this extra oil pattern.
Although dual oil pattern events solely utilizing very long and very short oil patterns actually limit the number of ball choices because optimal ball motions are very similar and the best line is normally very defined, as tournaments move towards dual oil patterns in the medium distance range, that perceived issue will most likely become more reality than perception. When competitive oil patterns are in the medium distance range, all the other variables that make up the playing field come into play more and optimum ball motion becomes an unknown until a player is onsite.
Another remarkable trend in the competitive bowling world the last few years is tournaments being organized and played with severely limited equipment rules or utilizing less frictional bowling balls. The 2005-2007 Dutch DVA Open, the 2006 WTBA World Challenge, the 1997 Scandinavian Plastic Only tournament and multiple Foundation Game events have been held with strict equipment limitations. Some events allowed only one ball while others allowed only one type of ball.
In the Scandinavian Plastic Only event, organizer Ulf Hämnäs stated that “many players in the region had the perception that the higher level players were the best because of their unlimited access to high tech equipment.”
Once the results were tallied however, those same high level players not only still finished at the top of the leader board, they far outpaced the field. Hämnäs said “the equipment advantage perception was replaced with the surprise that the amount of time spent on the lanes practicing actually made the difference, not just getting new balls.”
Hämnäs further stated, “I think this was the time when a lot of bowlers actually understood the greatness of bowlers like Tomas Leandersson.”
So did the winner “match up” best in these events? Much like the 1997 Scandinavian Plastic ball event, according to the other organizers the winners of their events received the same accolades from the competitors as the dual oil pattern event winners, respect from their peers for a job well done. The overall feelings were it was not that the winner matched up the best; it was that the winner bowled the best.
Now in the year 2009, even the PBA Tour is going to hold an event using only one type of bowling ball, the 50th Anniversary PBA plastic ball. In this historic PBA Tour event, all competitors will be limited to two of the special 50th Anniversary plastic balls for the entire event. The main idea is to level the playing field by taking the perceptual equipment advantage, or disadvantage, away so success is determined solely by a player’s physical and mental skill.
In other words, the event goal is to “ensure that the abilities of the athlete, first and foremost, will determine the outcome of the competition.”
Sound familiar?
Water Walker
I think that in order to give this story as much credibility as possible, I am going to have to brag a little. I have been involved in doing the lanes with the PBA for over 800 tournaments, which included the National Tour, the Senior Tour and all seven Regions of the Regional Program. I am the only person who has done lanes for every bowler that is in the PBA Hall of Fame. In other words, I have seen them all. And, perhaps, I am really the only person who knows exactly what they bowled "on", as far as lane conditions go.
My personal All-Time Top-10, includes; Dick 'Water Walker' Ritger. You talk about TALENT. Dick was unbelievable. He was a world-class bowler, a world class guy, and later became a world-class coach. Without question he was one of the coolest, smartest, shot-makers in the history of our great sport. He could bowl on anything.
I have literally hundreds of stories of some of the tremendous feats that were performed by the greatest bowlers in the world; those that are in the PBA Hall of Fame.
This particular story took place in the early 70's. We (the Tour) were at Cranston Bowl in Cranston, Rhode Island. The weather was absolutely miserable as it had been snowing for about a week before we got there. It was 10-degrees outside when I got off the plane. Not only that, but my job as laneman was going to be a lot tougher this week because we knew in advance that the place was in bad condition because they hadn't resurfaced in a couple of years and all of the league bowlers had been complaining. And it was an old, drafty two-sided house and each side played drastically different from each other - as well as each pair playing differently from each other. I knew that I was going to hear about that.
After the first day of qualifying, Ritger was in the lead, which wasn't unusual for this 20-time champion (at the time). Almost every bowler was upset with the lanes and I had to hear about it.
That night at 2:00am I went in to do the lanes and it was now 19-below zero. There was so much snow in the motel parking lot, that and I couldn't find my car and had to walk about a mile to get to the bowl. About 15-minutes after getting there, part of the roof on the high-side (the real tough side) caved-in from the weight of the snow. It was a disaster. The janitor called the head mechanic who in turn called the Manager. He called everybody he knew to get in there to help clean up the mess. I called Harry Golden (the Tournament Director) to let him know what had happened. I cleaned and oiled the low-side then went over to take a look at what was going on over on the disaster side. There were about 20 people cleaning the water, snow, ceiling tiles and other debris off of the lanes and approaches. You could see the sky through the hole in the ceiling. I remember thinking: "I'm sure that the guys will blame me for this, too."
There were buckets on the lanes that were still catching water from the drippy roof. It was now 6:00am and the Pro's were scheduled to bowl at 9:00am. At that point I thought that there was no way. I started cleaning and oiling the part of that side that wasn't under water. When I got to the part of the house that had caved in, a "Miracle" happened. It had stopped raining and the dripping over the lanes had stopped. I cleaned and oiled the rest of the lanes. There were still some drips coming down over the lanes, but "Miracle number 2" was that the drips were only over the gutter gaps and the buckets that were placed there were catching all of the drops. It was about 8:45am now, and I took the lane machine to the back. The mechanic and all his helpers were back there huddled next to a little heater he had, and they were all trying to dry out.
When I came out of the backend, I saw about 20-bowlers standing in the settee on 31 and 32. I went over there to see what was going on. The only drips that were still coming down were over the approach on that pair and because of the full field, they had to use that pair in the tournament. Harry made the decision to leave the three buckets where they were on the approach. It was either that, or put 5 on a pair, and none of the bowlers wanted that. The buckets were to stay in place for BOTH squads.
I stayed around to watch the 1st squad bowl. After they bowled their 6-games that morning, the high game on the pair was 149. It was impossible for the players to walk around the buckets that were there to execute any type of normal shot.
Now the next squad came in to bowl. Ritger was scheduled to bowl his 2nd game on 31 and 32. It would be interesting to see what he could do there and not lose too much of the lead that he had enjoyed. When he got there for game 2 of this second day, there was a huge crowd in the bleachers, and standing behind the bleachers, as well.
I watched him (with no practice balls) alter his approach by snaking his footwork around the three buckets in a serpentine manner. I couldn't believe my eyes. He shot 279 like it was nothing. It was ridiculous.
One World - One Game
It has been almost ten years since John Davis (Founder of the Kegel Company), called together a group of experienced lane men in an attempt to further research the on-going lane conditioning problems with our Sport. It had become apparent that too many tournaments were deemed unfair by the participants and tournament organizers. Bowling ball technology had rapidly advanced and it was getting next to impossible for the lane man to do the job without some sort of social controversy. After that five day meeting in Sebring, Florida, Davis promised to undertake the huge task of taking care of lanes at every major tournament in the world and then posting those results on The Foundation website for the whole world to see. Davis and The Foundation came up with their initial slogan which was: “One World – One Game.”
The Foundation also coined two other phrases:
1. "You don't need to be a lane man to know that there are problems, you just need to be a lane man to know how bad the problems are."
2. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
Early on, a series of scratch tournaments were developed, called: The Foundation Games. These events were held in this country (and abroad) with some promising results. They were unique by featuring ‘multiple conditions’ in an attempt to further challenge the participants by having more than one lane condition to compete on. Challenging oil patterns were used (both long and short) that required the athletes to compete on different lengths of oil during competition.
In 2000, Dr. P.S. Nathan, then President of the World Tenpin Bowling Association (WTBA), held a World Bowling Seminar in Malaysia and Davis was invited to attend along with many other bowling leaders from around the world. At that week-long educational meeting, it was unanimously decided that in order to find out who the best players were at any given event, the athletes needed to be challenged with these ‘multiple condition’ type tournaments.
The WTBA then formed a Technical Committee (TC) to continue researching the problems on a world wide basis. Since then, different tournament formats have been tested along with bowling ball restrictions (amount of balls used in the events) which were instituted. It is quite clear today, that some of the underdeveloped countries are at a disadvantage regarding bowling equipment.
For many years now, numerous thoughts, opinions and feelings about lane conditioning have been constantly expressed on most every bowling websites discussion groups. Depending on the average person’s position (agenda), most blame the problems with our game on various aspects of the game, including; pins, oil patterns, balls, kick-backs, flat gutters and an assortment of other things. Most have never done lanes and have no idea what that particular job entails.
Today, even with the use of different formats and multiple conditions, problems still exist in our great sport. The WTBA Technical Committee feels that it is time to try a different approach.
"One World - One Game - One Ball"
In 2003, Davis was named as Chairman of the WTBA TC, and Kegel was still taking care of all the tournaments for the WTBA and developing countless oil patterns. It became obvious that the lane man still could not do his job without some social unrest. Something else was needed.
The WTBA TC decided to research and test a type of bowling ball that would not mutate the oil patterns as much as today’s High Tech balls do. Davis was put in charge of doing the research for this project. Days, weeks and months went into this very technical testing, using CATS data.
A ‘prototype’ bowling ball was developed which showed encouraging results. During the week of April 17-22, a Bowling Writers meeting was scheduled in Orlando, Florida (which is only about 80 miles from Kegel’s Training Center), that was combined with the USBC Annual Meeting.
The WTBA TC also scheduled a meeting at this time and this was a chance to announce this new theory. A small scratch tournament would be held and the results would be shown to the world. Many top players from Florida would participate along with some other top amateurs and former PBA Tour champions. It was an eight game event that was bowled across eight lanes. The amount of oil that was used was 7.140 mL, which is an amount that was used in the early 1970’s.
Those results (total pin fall) were:
1. Bob Learn, Jr. (1880)
2. Vernon Peterson (1770)
3. Matt Gilman (1715)
4. Bob Handley (1675)
5. Mike Purdy (1671)
6. Larry Barwick (1670)
7. Rob Comito (1666)
8. Steve Johnson (1660)
9. Neil Stremmel (1655)
10. Storm DeVincent (1627)
10. (T) Sami Luoto (1627)
12. Chris Chartrand (1612)
13. Dennis Davis (1598)
14. Craig Auerbach (1596)
15. Saul Insignares (1573)
16. Tony Lavance (1572)
17. Ron Dixon (1523)
18. Jose Rodriquez (1514)
19. John Forst (1513)
20. Dennis Psaropoulos (1512)
21.Tony Crews (1477)
22. Bill Blackwell (1454)
23. Pekka Korpi (1383)
24. Josh Moore (1354)
Each player paid a $100.00 entry fee to enter the tournament, and that included a bowling ball. Each player had a choice of 15 or 16 pounds to use. Except for that weight difference, all of the balls were made as similarly as humanly possible. Davis donated an additional $2600.00 for a total Prize Fund of: $5000.00. Learn earned $2000.00 for the win along with a very nice banner that was signed by all of the participants and those on the WTBA TC. In all, 12 players cashed.
When asked if he wanted the banner, Learn said, “Certainly. It will go in my trophy room with all of my other cherished awards.” He added, “This was great. ALL tournaments should be like this one because I really think that it was the fairest tournament that I have ever bowled in.”
After the event, all the players were asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire that had a multitude of pertinent questions regarding the tournament. Those queries are currently being analyzed.
All in all, it was deemed a tremendous success by the Players and Officials. All results of the CATS data (from every shot, from every player) are also being analyzed. When completed, a detailed report will be sent to WTBA President Heikke Sarso for review.
STAY TUNED!