Sometimes you can have too much information.  I've spent the last several weeks really digging and getting super technical in an attempt to figure out some new ways to explain certain concepts to a customer who is having a lot of trouble understanding bowling in general.  To his credit, he really wants a full understanding of what's going on, but he's so new to all of this that the advanced stuff is really throwing him for a loop, mostly because he's trying to go too fast, and hops on one train really quickly and runs with it.  In the process however, my findings have been rather disappointing.  There are so many variables to bowling, the physics of it are such that regardless of what control you think you have over the outcome of a game, lane transition, layout, etc., you're relying on an astronomical number of things to work together in your favor every time you let go of the ball. 



Ball design has nowhere to go, no different than tire technology.  They may find ways to alter and adjust things, but durability is about the only thing they can hope to improve on.  You can reshuffle the deck as much as you'd like, but the cards will never change.  You can't overcome physics. 



Jayhawk's ball surface scanner has shown and proven that ball surface changes so significantly over the course of just one league set that what you think you're doing to the surface of your ball and what grit you think you're keeping it at are uncontrollably inconsistent. 



Now what you think I might be saying here is actually opposite of the point I'm making.  There are so many variables in the numbers and the science, that you the bowler are really the only thing that makes a difference.  The amount of variables make it IMPOSSIBLE to control anything mathematically, what really matters is a bowler's intuition, vision, and ability to read ball reaction.  It's literally an every single shot adjustment, even if that means not making one.  Humans are simply not accurate enough to be able to realistically apply the required consistency to take advantage of the applied mathematics.  All the layouts, ball design, surfaces, lane surfaces, lane oils, ball motion studies, what have you, that all doesn't really amount to anything.  The person throwing the ball is literally all that matters, we might as well go back to throwing plastic balls.  All this technology just adds a bunch of extra steps and confusion to something so complicated that it's reduced to simplicity due to factors that are outside reasonable control.  Or in other words, there are so few things that we as humans can actually control or affect that it's literally impossible to take advantage of the endlessly complex mathematics that there are to work with.  There is no spoon. 

One thing I'd like to add, about those saying that you need to make your spares. While that is very true.....you still need throw strikes. If you make 100% of your spares 100% of the time but throw no strikes, you will not average over 200.

How many all spare games do you see? If you are that good with spares your probably mixing in your fair share of strikes. Are there going to be games where you have only a couple because of bad carry and other breaks...yes no matter your average. Being able to adjust to changing conditions by ball, hand placement, or moving your lines will be a huge roll in every bowlers game. While trying to find your line again if your not sparing your score with 2 strike and two or three opens will be far less then an all spare game.

The only thing I know about these balls is they are lower priced Brunswick balls.  Without inside information you don't even know if they use the original formulation of PK 17 & 18 or what SK13 actually is.  So the only thing these balls have in common to me is price point. 

I'm not saying you can't drill a stronger core weak and a weaker core stronger to get them to react close.  I'm saying if the other variables are constant the 2.50 ball is going to be stronger than the 2.55 ball.  So the numbers matter. 

It may not matter to you, but if it didn't matter we wouldn't be limited to 2.46 .060 when making a ball.

I give up.  You can buy your balls based off the marketing material.  I'll sell them based off what they actually do.

If the performance of those balls is almost identical the covers aren't as similar as you are led to believe.

Maybe I look at things a little differently because I know balls are marketed based on the core and cover combination, but the cover isn't always what it is marketed as.  I hope that makes sense.

But once you test balls that you know are the same coverstock you see the difference in reaction between balls with different core numbers.

Truth be told, I have come to almost completely ignore ball specs.  I watch as many videos I can of the ball being thrown and go from there.  I used to be able to see and feel different core numbers, but with the differences in the combinations of core and coverstock they're using now, it's changing things up.  There are several balls coming out now with higher rgs and more aggressive coverstocks, but they roll like lower rg balls of the past.  So if I take my Brutal Nightmare for example, it has an average rg of 2.53, but if I didn't know that and had to guess, I'd have said something like 2.48 just because it rolls so heavy.  Again, the deeper into the numbers I get, the more I realize it's needless confusion.  I understand what they're trying to do, but there's too much going on to take advantage of the science and the math.  If you're looking for another reason bowling has gone downhill, I'd point at that. 

I think the most important thing for a "new" bowler to understand is how to get proper "roll" on a ball at release. All of the latest and greatest balls don't mean anything if they do not have the proper roll which promotes pin carry and consistency of reaction.