As I've had my Complete NV for about three weeks now I can give you my impressions with this ball. First, it is much more ball than the Total, easily being an instant 5 boards move to the left on the approach. It isn't for a total flood as I found out this weekend in our State Tournament as Minors was as tight a shot as I've seen in along while. More on that later.
On a THS, everyone in this town over exagerates the middle puddle to the point of ridiculous. The bowlers who don't have alot of "hand" love it because they can go up the outsides against the bumper and never have the ball crash left at the end of the pattern. Anyone with hand can't throw this line even at 20 mph because at the end of the pattern the ball is going left, fast. Once you move a bit in to keep it right of the 1-3, a miss in and the ball skates.
I normally go to more aggresive equipment and play much deeper than most as I throw about 16 mph. I also target the breakpoint since on tougher patterns it helps me take any out of bounds out of play. Even at that it can be pretty touchy sometimes. Grab a little or miss a pinch wide early and it will jump. With the aggressive mentality, miss in a pinch and not get all of it and it will skate long. Usually I have a board in either direction. The Complete allows me more room and I'm not sure yet how much as I'm still geting used to it. With my Total On Brunswick Synthetics I'm normally about 35 to 37 with my feet. On wood about 34 to 36, a board less. With the Complete I can easily go to 40 to 42 on both. Last week I tried it on the wood as my Total was hinting at some Out of bounds or at least pushing farther right and not charging back. I ended up Starting at about 40 with the Complete and had no problem getting it to the rack. By the end of the night I was standing about 45 and I honestly think I could have moved more.
It gets down the lane very similar to the Total but gets back from farther away and will still hook up if I do get it in a bit. Hit is awesome as it is with the Total.
In State this weekend we knew Minors would be tight. More horror stories than not about the huge amount of oil to this point. Since the Complete is the biggest ball in my bag right now that was the one I was throwing. I chose to go up 3 board and hope the lane would open up from there. Decent look but a bit fast and it was going long. Any way shot 220+ the first two before the lanes finally started to move. Took me five frames of trying to adjust wide and failing ( no break point target boards and tried to guess at distance )before I moved left. Ended up about 32 and kept it inside of 12 and had a decent shot then. Singles I went back wide and it wasn't quite the same. Managed a buck 90 but seemed to be much touchier and wanted to hook a bit earlier, until you moved left a couple boards, then hang. Second game went to where I finsihed Doubles and shot 2 plus again but the last game got 4 pin itis. Tried different hand position, throwing harder, etc and kept leaving 4's, move aboard or two left and Hang city. May have had better luck with surface as a ball with more hair would have helped.
So I guess it's mixed. On a house shot and more managible volumes of oil it's a beast. But on a heavier pattern or longer pattern, out of the box it mellows it down a bunch. We kind of saw that with TJ last week on the Shark pattern too. He seemed to really back down speed wise to get it to curl in.
I'm guessing it will be alright for me at Nationals. Last year I had a decent look standing about 40 or so and throwing to the outside breakpoint markers but left a lot of 10's with the Total. A little bit more volume this year it looks like so I'm hoping I can play the same area and snap the 10's out.
By the way, both the Total and Complete are drilled pattern 1 and are box finish. As most of us don't see a moat to moat flood to often this ball should work very well as is. But it also would have been nice to have another at 1000 Abralon yesterday.
theiceman
