Layouts are all "relative" to the lane condition you think you are going to bowl on,..."a ball drilled to hook early and alot" means that you are drilling a ball to a KNOWN condition,....a ball drilled/layed out for you may hook early and alot,....and on the same condition may go long and straight for me....layouts are only used to fine tune a balls reaction to a known condition to a specific bowlers technique.  You can control layouts and surface prep, I agree, but these are only fine tuning devices.
In any tournament played the first and foremost consideration is lane conditioning. After you know that, your second thought is a ball surface,...then layouts fine tune to the known elements. That's why the PBA regional guys and the touring as well want to know the "pattern", once they know the pattern they then pick a "surface" or ball,..then they fine tune to that....why do guys want to know what's the shot at Nationals...so the can pick a ball/surface and then lay it out to do maybe what they think they will need. But Lane Conditions and the Ball Surface is the most important part of the selection process...to me it's 95% of the thought and results,..the layouts are 5%,....let's say you're going to a tournament and you have NO IDEA of what you will find,...and you can take 4 balls....what would you rather have one ball layed out for 4 different reactions,....or 4 different balls all layed out the same way with different surfaces....Lay outs are used to enhance a known variable,...