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.

Yep total mess. There has to be thousands sitting in various distributor warehouses currently. Thousands of each ball. I know Ace Mitchell had over 700 Phaze 4s alone a week or 2 ago. How about Classic? Grand Prix? DiLaura? Island? The list goes on and on.

As for the PBA….they may take a few but definitely not enough to dent the thousands Storm will have to eat from distributors.

Bradl...

The part about the PBA....there are only so many PBA Storm guys....or guys who are not on anyones staff that can throw Storm....so there is a very limited number of balls that can be sold/distributed there. Have you ever been on the PBA truck or seen inside the PBA truck...the shelf space is limited and there is shelf space for every company that paid the fee to be eligible to be used on the PBA....so you have space for Lord Field (Swag), Big Bowling, Motiv, Brunswick's 7 brands and Storm's 3 brands....plus accessories etc.. How and where would Storm send a sufficient amount of product to the truck? They still have to have room for the other product that didn't get banned too....

Because the USBC has a direct hand in the PWBA, that is out. So distribution opportunities for the banned balls is very limited for Storm if distributors can't sell to pro shops.

Oh I know how the truck works. Unfortunately 

I think Bill Chrisman will have a little different feeling about that.

Just a note about purple hammers.  The new harder ones are still making all the other urethane look bad.  Tommy Jones thrashed Kyle Sherman last night.  Kyle never even tried a pitch black because he probably knew it wouldn't hit compared the purple.  I understand rules are rules but the hardness rule today is not having any impact on ball performance.  The new purples ate hitting just as good as the banned ones .  likewise the banned Storm balls aren't any better for being a couple of points too soft. 

https://youtu.be/sKCtQ63FRQo

Watch and learn.

The problem with this is that it is posted by one side in the fight with this, so it can’t be seen or proven with any level of impartiality. Another unbiased 3rd party (in particular, a governing body) needs to perform this test and show their results. Someone like, oh, I dunno… the WTBA?

BL.

I was just trying to educate Bowlers. But it is unfortunate that so many people are close minded. Not you, mind you. You were totally open minded about the issue and I’m sure you have as I have, I contacted USB-C to see all the Rod data results as well as view the conditions of testing. They refuse. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a member of the USB-C or have been a member for 50 years. Secrecy is the best

One thing that people don’t tend to also realize is that the USBC and PBA are not the be all/end all of Bowling. We know that other countries have their own governing bodies, and their rules hold sway. We know Canada is following the USBC’s path, but there is still Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, etc. on top of that there is also the JPBA and KPBA tours, so Storm still has plenty of ways to sell these balls overseas, since they haven’t been banned there. The only problem they’d have is if a bowler from there came to bowl the Masters or got an invite to the US Open, then they’d be stuck.

BL.