Last season, I used urethane a lot, but had some success with an older solid cover reactive ball. Wanting to be like everybody else, I desired to use a reactive ball if possible, and bought a new solid cover ball.
No luck. It ended up being too strong/too early. Polished it up, but it still was just not what I was looking for. Just not clean enough to get the consistent read I was looking for.
Season started back last night, and as an experiment, I took an older, weakish pearl ( A.M.F. Hype with F45 pearl), and put a green scotchbrite finish on it.
The results were surprisingly pleasing.
It ended up stronger than I really wanted, but is also so consistent and readable that I fell for it almost immediately. Clean enough to get through the fronts on our medium shot as long as I stayed firm, and still plenty of "pop" off the breakpoint as long as I remembered to "pat it on the bottom" at the release point.
Bowled the first game with an old Nitro urethane, playing an outside line, about 10 to 5. Shot a 235, but wanted to try it out, and decided to bowl the next two games with the "experiment".
Not knowing what to expect, I underestimated it. It took me almost half a game to get everything right, and struck out the tenth for a 193.
Finally, playing with feet on 29, throwing at 14-15, out to the breakpoint on about 7-8, this thing was great. Only problem I had after that was operator error, and that stone eight in the 9th frame. Ended up with a 227.
Ball is drilled cg in palm, with about a three inch pin to pap, no weight hole.
Like everybody always says, SURFACE IS KING! Turned my 8yr old piece of junk into a pretty decent ball I think I'll find myself using quite a bit.
