I was watching Xtra Frame today and someone from Innovative was talking about a drilling/layout for a thumbless bowler that would allow 6 different layouts on the ball and, I'm assuming, still be legal.

I'm guessing this would just be three holes in a triangle around the cg, so that no matter which two holes you used with your fingers (and no thumb) it would be statically legal.  Depending on the holes used, it would allow the pin to be in 6 different positions and give 6 different reactions.

Anyone know anything about this?  They said they pulled up a picture online, but I couldn't find anything.

So, that's legal because any two holes can be used for gripping, and the leftover hole would be considered the weight hole?

My ball driller's head is probably spinning around. He's already of the mindset that two-handed bowling needs to be outlawed. If sees this, he's going to freak! lol

This has been floating around a while. Drilled a few for one local guy who really likes it.

Hell whats not to like,  you got options.

don't you have to have 3 "griping" holes that are at least covered by the hand?

No

in the example above, if the 3rd hole is under the hand it would be legal.

using the example above, if the 3rd hole was not covered by the hand and was in fact used as a balance hole then how would the ball be legal in static weight?  if there is no "thumb" hole, then you cant measure finger/thumb weights.

You don't need a thumb hole to measure the static weights.

One thing you can't do with that layout is use finger inserts,  because you can't have one in a "weight hole"

Don't understand how you measure the static weights without a thumb hole.  without the drip lines how do you define the hemispheres that you compare for static weight?

guess I haven't cared enough to keep up on these rule changes as much as you guys.

Don't understand how you measure the static weights without a thumb hole.  without the drip lines how do you define the hemispheres that you compare for static weight?

guess I haven't cared enough to keep up on these rule changes as much as you guys.

The weight is determined by where the grip center is, with no thumb hole the grip center is in between the finger holes

See the USBC EQUIPMENT SPECIFICATIONS MANUAL here for more information:

http://usbcongress.http.internapcdn.net/usbcongress/bowl/equipandspecs/pdfs/ESManual.pdf

and a ball used without any gripping holes or indentations at all just may not have more than 1 ounce of difference between any two halves of the ball.

A lot of these are not actually new rules either.

I just had my driller put this layout on a Brunswick Melee that he wanted off the shelf. It's pretty neat Being able to pack six different reactions into one bowling ball. I have to do some more testing, but the results were pretty interesting so far.

What pitches did he use so that the fingers didn't run together?