Well I ponied up to the table yesterday during Brian's Sport Tourney in Trenton, first sport experience and it's definately an experience!  The shot was about 40 feet of heavy oil, and it played like it the first 2-3 games.  I have played major oil before, and was playing standing 6, throwing across 8 or 9 and with very little backswing and all sorts of follow through to fight through the oil.  After hitting 2 stirkes in practice for the whole session, I came out with the first 5, stayed clean and finished 223.  Next game, I left an early split, but managed to stay strong for a 212.  

By game 3, the lanes began breaking down a touch and I couldn't figure out the transition.  I made no spares for a whopping 144, came back for a respectable 184 the 4th game, and then lost everything with a nice 139 the last game.  -62 after being up 35 was painful, but them the breaks!  When it is all said and done, for my first time to average 186, I'm happy.
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D <~~~~ Used to be terrible wiffing 10 pins.  Now through much practice, can wiff any single pin spare at any time.

Darrell Guzman
guzmand19 - Yahoo IM and MSN screen names

Transition is the part that is really, really tough.
I bowled a sport league last summer - 3 games, doubles. Not enough transition to talk about. I hope they go to way more games this year.
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-- The way we see the problem is the problem.

I'm averaging 173 on sport conditions this year, with a 219 ths average, so from I would say that you did pretty darned good for a first time. Keep up the scores, and try and make those spares!
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stanski

Dear Darrell,

Glad you "enjoyed" a heavy oil sport shot. Please be warned, though, that most ABC/USBC sport oil patterns are much drier and play more like reverse blocks.
(Leastwise, our league officials told us that most of the ABC's approved patterns were like, flat, very light oil.) They did play like reverse blocks.

In any case, for most of us, on heavy or lighter oil, the trick is to leave makeable spares and throw plastic balls as straight as possible and make as many as possible.

More "joy" awaits you.

On my side of the coin, I prefer the flood to the dry. As I mentioned, the drier, flat shot takes on the appearance and must be played like a reverse block - VERY, Very nasty. I wound up having to dig out a polished Black Hammer (urethane) and play virtually down the 3rd arrow,maybe 2-3 board swing. My Dyno-Thane Barrage was hooking too much, or skidding out side of 10 and hooking early inside of 4th arrow. Throwing an original Blue Dot at the 7 pinwith my normal release, allowing almost a 10 board hook, saw the ball hooking into the gutter just in front of the 7 pin. Quite shocking.

Be happy with heavy oil!

-guzmand19

Good for you.  Always nice to hear about someone trying and enjoying the challenge of bowling on tough conditions.  As you probably know, spares are critical on any pattern but even more so on a tough shot (sports patterns included) because it is difficult to string strikes to "make up" for missed spares.  Good luck on future sport shots.
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Kill the back row (or maybe this should read "make your spares, dummy")