BallReviews
General Category => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: downstroker7 on June 24, 2015, 08:14:45 PM
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Has anyone bowled on the Bear? I found a graph from 2013 that said the volume was 29.6 mL. Is this still correct? Would you suggest a lower grit surface than normally used?
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Shot the Bear at the Pro-Am in Pensacola. OOB from 7 to gutter, but snappy backends. Control ball would be my recommendation, for me I used a Forza/Venom Shock.
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Bear is very tough unless or until you really build a track into it. Ball initially jumps coming off the end of the oil no matter where you play, and carrydown can be nasty, as is often the case on any high volume flat pattern. Also a big problem people don't think about is that it really exposes topography differences from lane to lane that are masked by more heavily crowned patterns. Lastly, at 40 feet it is an in between length that doesn't allow you to play like a short pattern, but doesn't set up tight like a longer pattern might. This latter issue may be unique to my game.
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Agreed. It is tough. I am currently bowling on this pattern in our summer league.
My best success has been with a Columbia Melt Down, sanded with 500 abralon
(on the fresh). I have to really concentrate on staying behind the ball as much as possible and keeping my angles completely closed. My ball speed also needs to be very consistent from shot to shot. Controlling the breakpoint is paramount. When the pattern begins to transition, I can increase my axis rotation very very slightly and go to a ball that gets through the fronts a little cleaner. Even doing these, this is a pattern where the main goal is
to try and stay as clean as possible and focus on filling frames.
This pattern will indeed, expose the lanes' varied topographies as well.