If you read the "Well, just call me stupid" thread, you're familiar with my Gold Nugget story. The Cliff's Notes version is that I had one, it was a terrible over/under piece of junk, I sold it quick and it's been bothering me ever since.
So last week, I found a guy with a used one. It was cheap, it was in good shape, and the drill pattern was pretty much foolproof: CG above thumb, pin at 1:30 above the ring, which put it about 3 3/4 from my PAP. Small weight hole in thumb-positive quadrant. I've used this drilling on many other balls I've owned and it never lets me down.
Tonight, I take the following four balls to league:
1. Gold Nugget (15 lbs)
2. Track Solution Power Plus EX (14 lbs)
3. Track Threat (16 pounds)
4. Visionary Slate Blue Gargoyle (14 lbs, for spares)
The SPPEX is drilled pin over bridge, CG in palm, weight hole on the VAL in the finger-positive quadrant. I've got 5 games on that ball, tops. The Threat is brand-new. CG on the PAP, pin above ring.
In practice, I pick up the Nugget. Throw it over 13 out to 9. It comes back to 13 and dies.
The Threat and the SPPEX are tested right behind that. Each reads the fresh backends. SPPEX is a flippy ball for me and it flips. Strike. The Threat, with its rolly drilling, reads, rolls, and rolls out dead flush in the pocket. Strike.
I send the nugget down there again, same line, same result. Now I'm ill. I just can't believe this is going to happen to me again with this ball.
I put it up and start trying to hunt for something with one of the two Track balls. No more than two or three minutes into practice, the SPPEX is already skating on the oil that's being pushed to the back. Backend reaction is getting spotty. Figures, since the ball is basically a pearl.
The Threat, a high-gloss particle pearl, figures to be my first option, then. But the thumb hole is hanging up a little (it's fresh off my drill press at home) and I don't have time to really work it out.
So I'm planning to make a go of it with the SPPEX deep inside when, on a lark, on my last two shots of practice, I pull out the Gold Nugget again and decide to see what straight up 10 looks like. What it looks like are two big strikes, messengers everywhere.
I figure, what the hey. First couple of frames with the Nugget are hard taps - 4 pin, 10 pin. I make both. Strike, then another spare that I miss (3-6-10, slid by the 3). Then four in a row.
End result: 215 in the first game. This is good.
Second game, the heads start going away just a little. The other team is switching all over the place with their equipment (more on this in a second). I move 2 boards left with the feet, and altering my wrist position -- end up punching out for 221.
Third game wasn't so great -- lanes dried out terribly and I shot 160, changing to the Threat late but not soon enough.
In other words, two great games for me with a ball I never shot worth a da*n with the last time I owned one. It definitely will keep a spot in my bag for awhile as I continue to experiment.
Jess
p.s.: Got a look at a Buzzbomb tonight. A guy on the other team shot roughly 200-200 with it before switching to one of the pearlized Lane #1s (some kind of Carbide Bomb?) and shooting 235 with it. He was a high speed, low hook (but high revs, forward roll), very accurate and direct bowler, so I'm not sure that was a real good test of what a Buzzbomb can do, plus I thought the oil volume was way too low for that ball anyway. But he did do a good job of blowing my hold area to hell, which is why I had to switch out of the Nugget in game 3.
