With all the new rules, no weight holes, no cleaners ect….It seems to me that USBC is totally ignoring the real issue. Walled up house shots and no control over the shot put out by the proprietors. I know this has been discussed before but I am all for setting up different levels of leagues with easy to harder to sport shots.

I have been bowling for 20 + years and have seen the advancements in technology. I agree the equipment has advanced signifigantly but so has the ability of modern lane machines to put down a very precise shot. I bowled on a high $ league 3 years ago that was 50 ft and flat. I could not get a Hyper cell to wrinkle on this.

I think the USBC needs to concentrate on this area first. Opinions?

I still remember back in the early 60s listening to guys on the loaded teams win the league every season and complain about all the handicap the bottom teams got.

Back when hdcp was something like 70% of 200?

Want an opinion you don't get often? I think the only restriction on ball specs should be overall weight and size. Drill 40 holes in it if you want. You want five pounds of side weight? Go for it, big boy. Let me see you control that thing when you pull it a half board.

People don't want harder conditions/shots/equipment. About 10-15 years ago all the top bowlers in the leagues I was on got together and started demanding a tougher shot. So the house put together a scratch league bowling on rotating PBA/Kegel patterns. Took about a month for the same bowlers to start griping that they weren't scoring high enough.

I've only seen one house put down tough shots in the face of bowler objection and survive for a long time: Leland Lanes in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Took us 33 weeks to get the first 600 series in the league one year on a 16-team, 5-man men's league. They just went out of business this year (a Bowlero opened down the street). Leland's shot was roughly 27 feet, 12 units from 10-board to 10-board and 10 units from 2-board to 10-board. It was blown out by the time practice ended, whether anyone was throwing resin or not.

In the end, it doesn't matter. The house will use what it uses. We've been arguing about this for a half century. Or more.

Jess

Our summer singles sport shot league continues to increase each year. It started with 22 bowlers a few years ago. This summer that number has increased to 68 bowlers.

Got 30 guys bowling a summer sport league here.  It goes up every year
  Also runs during the winter.   If want respect from other bowlers you bowl the sport league.   Rolling ip 230 averages on house shots impresses nobody unless they can back it up on a tougher pattern

 
Every year I bowl a THS league and Sport Shot league. I do the Sport Shot league to work on skills. I could care less who it impresses.

Prior to reactive resin lane conditions had to be very easy for scoring to be even decent.  ABC allowed 24 to 28 foot walls and scoring was really good.   Unfortunately this addicted a generation of bowlers to unlimited swing area. Resin balls actually reduced the need for wet dry walls of the urethane era, but instead of blending out the patterns lane men simply started going longer with higher volumes of oil to combat the effects of resin.

As a real old timer I didnt feel I needed the walls in the lacquer era prior to the mid 70's.  However the harder urethane finishes and subsequent synthetic lanes  made me want the easy lanes.  Flat patterns were brutal.  When resin came out us old strokers loved it because we once again could utilize the hold area and not worry about the carry down that was always a killer for urethane on short oil.

If the modern lane conditioning technology had existed in the 80s it would have been possible to develop challenging yet playable patterns of varying lengths for high level scratch bowlers,  and resin could have been banned before it was introduced. 
Short oil and hard lane finishes spawned the modern power  game, which in turn paved the way for reactive resin and for a short time leveled the playing field between power players and straighter players.  As power players learned to harness the friction of resin, it once again made the straight player a niche competitor. 

Bottom line, the worst thing about resin balls is the way they can destroy oil patterns so quickly,  not how high scoring they can be.  Lane conditioning technology has advanced tremendously since pre resi, but cannot keep up with the powerful shells of the resin balls in the hands of the modern power player.

In a game where the cream always came to the top over time, longer formats are a joke without constant re oiling between squads. 

Just as an aside, people were complaining about walled up lanes ruining the game in the 1970s when soft polyester came out.  Decline of league membership never had anything to do with scoring.   It wsd just an excuse  for people who were tired of the long term committment of leagues

I too often make the mistake of posting from the perspective of the high level scratch community.   I think bowlers who want to compete for large prize funds at the scratch level should should embrace and strive to learn to play a variety of tournament patterns.  Alternatively I think bowlers who want to have fun and throw strikes should not be pushed to play on tough patterns.   There should be room for both worlds with the sophistication of modern lane conditioning.

It really depended on the area during the lacquer era.  Lots of corner shot houses, and houses with a great track inside 10 board in our area..  Pocket was easy, but if you  pulled a board or 2 into the oil carry was poor with the hard rubber balls.  Only about 5 guys in town over 200 until after 1970.  1975 was th e breakout season for scoring here.  Soft plastic balls and guys getting better at walling them up raised my average from 200 to 214 that season.  Not just me, we recorded 8 800s that year after only having 2 in the orior history of the association.  Bowled a swiss tournament in Portland Ore that year and ot took a 230 average to cash in the sweeper singles