USBC and Storm Products have agreed on a national tournament exclusion rule and ball exchange program for six Storm Products manufactured ball models. The agreement comes after USBC identified the models having a percentage of balls produced below USBC minimum 73D hardness specification. Read more: https://bowl.com/News/NewsDetails.aspx?id=23622337509

USBC's investigation showed a percentage of these ball models measured below the USBC-required hardness level of the approval samples submitted by Storm. Storm collaborated with USBC after being notified of this testing.

The affected models include: Storm Phaze 4, Storm Electrify Solid, Storm Trend 2, 900 Global Altered Reality, 900 Global Wolverine, Roto Grip UFO Alert

Effective March 30, 2022, these balls models are prohibited from use in USBC national tournaments, including but not limited to, the USBC Masters, U.S. Open, USBC Open Championships, USBC Women's Championships, all PWBA Tour events, USBC Junior Gold and Youth Open Championships, USBC Intercollegiate Championships, USBC Team USA Trials, USBC Senior Masters and USBC Senior Queens.

These ball models remain USBC approved. Each USBC competition, whether tournament or league, has the option to adopt USBC's national tournament rule prohibiting use of these balls or to continue to allow their use.

USBC has shared this national tournament rule with Storm and has Storm's support. Storm will offer owners of the affected balls the option to exchange their balls for a new product. Information about the exchange program will be published later this week on StormBowling.com.

At what point does the +/- 2 accuracy get taken into account?

Does anyone know if the numbers the USBC is putting out are from their spot / on site testing at the Masters?

They’re going to call a table behind a curtain a controlled environment and gloss over the +/- 2 variable since they’ve left their hopefully static environment at headquarters for these tests?

tl;dr: Storm too big to fail.

My Lord, there are a lot of people that are mad at the USBC for finally doing their job.  It seems pretty simple.  The balls are illegal by the USBC standards of 73D.  Most of them are not illegal using the PBA's 70D standards.  However, to protect SPI, Tom Clark issued a statement with a false equivalency comparing the USBC's data to the PBA's as if they found different results.  They didn't; they just have different thresholds for what constitutes "illegal".

Also, the health of the bowling industry worldwide (and especially the PBA) is currently dependent on Storm's viability, production, and support.  Therefore, they will do what they have to in order to protect Storm's financial well-being so that the industry will not suffer.

In short, the balls are illegal, the timing of the announcement/exclusion was awful and flat-out wrong, the USBC did its job, and the PBA is protecting a major sponsor and hoping that nobody notices their hypocrisy.  Importantly, it's all being done for the greater good of keeping the bowling industry going strong instead of having it potentially fall apart.  Chad Murphy is being used as a scapegoat, which is easy because he legitimately screwed up the timing of the announcement/enforcement of the ban/exclusion.  However, Tom Clark's statement is infinitely more shady and bullcrap than anything Chad Murphy has done, but he had to do it to protect a huge sponsor.

USBC finally doing their jobs?

They’re the ones who created this crapfest with the timing of their decision as well as the decisiveness as a topper.

You agree the timing is horrible.

Thoughts on the USBC totally abdicating their responsibility on making a decision on the balls for all bowlers? Leaving it to local associations and tournaments was stupid.

If they wanted to keep them legal for use outside of those exclusion tournaments, them make the executive decision and be done with it. Be the governing body and provide leadership and certainty for your membership as to what’s going to happen with those balls come the start of fall 2022 season.

All they did was kick the responsibility to someone else. Allow folks to blame someone else for a decision. Decisions that will not be made until after Storm’s exchange window closes on the affected bowling balls. Well after.

A total crapfest if and/or when those balls start being banned for local use for the Fall 2022 season and bowlers are stuck with $150+ door stops because of no exchange option.

I should say that I disagree on one point, but only partially.  Storm created the crapfest by putting illegal balls out into the market, not the USBC.  The USBC made it much worse because of all of the things you mentioned, but that's still better than putting their heads in the sand and pretending the original problem doesn't exist.

Want to know why bowling is such a mess ... look no further than the USBC.

They tested balls yes ..... BUT THEY DID NOT ADHERE TO THEIR OWN POLICY !!!!

All balls must be sanded to 500 grit before testing -- THEY DIDN'T DO THIS !!!!!!

This ruling has ZERO integrity behind it !  -- It's pathetic that the governing body behind bowling at the national level has less integrity than a condo owners association. 

Who hires these idiots?

One question that came up for me when I received my replacement balls(for the Spectre). The Phase 4 is R2S Pearl, which is "somewhat" banned. I received a Hy-Road Pearl as a replacement, also R2S Pearl. The inspection date(On the box) for the Hy-Road is 3/22/2022. How can one be legal and not the other when they both use the same cover with the same box finish?

Is it the color? Maybe the scent?

2 responses:

1. Avabob - Ron Hickland (Creating the Difference CTD) already did the varying degree of hardness. There is actually a noticable difference. I saw the video on Youtube. Go check it out.

2. Milo - I asked the same question. Answer I got was the Hyroad is probably illegal too (speculation). However, when USBC said we are at 6 balls and counting, my hunch (speculation) is Storm waived the white flag and said stop before we are bankrupt. Imagine how many Hyroads would need replaced (pearl and hybrid original) if found illegal? That is why USBC said there would be no other balls found illegal in the news release (speculation yet again).