Well tonight I bowled at a local AMF place.  I tried defending AMF once based on a good house we have here in town, but after going to this other place I am in complete concurrence that AMF is the devil.  The stupid girl behind the counter was such a human wasteland that she was more interested in flirting with her boss than doing her job.

So anyways, I got my first chance to throw my nice new Scout Reactive tonight.  I went with a couple of female friends who don't bowl and really have no technique to speak of.  Well let me say that it's a good thing that I believe in checking my ego at the door, because they bowled 131 and 109 respectively, while I bowled 107 (the lowest I've bowled in about three months).  Had a lane breakdown four frames in, and some jackass drunkard on the lane next to us yelling about any and everything.  Guess that'll be a good way to work on the mental game.

Still, the new ball and new grip felt good.  I think that by the end of the summer I'll be used to it, and I could really put some turn on the ball without all the effort before.  I also noticed that this now properly drilled 15lb ball felt about like a 12lb ball when I threw it: completely effortless.

Now for the obligatory question:

Is it possible to throw so hard that your ball just "cuts" through the oil?  My two friends threw extremely slow balls that looked to get funneled in to the pocket (I'm guessing due to the oiling pattern), but everything that I threw - and I was throwing too hard at times - looked to just go wherever in spite of the oil.

Yes, I can tell you from many years of experience at making this mistake, you can indeed throw the ball too hard and overpower the shot and/or the ability of the ball to perform properly.  The tough part is to find that happy medium where you balance ball speed with lane conditions at the time.  If the lanes are drier, then you can get away with a higher ball speed.  But if the lanes are on the heavy oil side, then one can quickly overpower the ball and it will skid right through what should have been the breakpoint.