Nic: Wish you could have had some words of encouragement for us as well; we sure coulda used them last Saturday...
The skinny: We bowled the 12:30 PM team squad on Saturday, and the pattern was pretty flat at the start with strong back ends. Of course, this type of shot can fool you into thinking that you can play the house track, and you can, for a while, like maybe three frames or so. When the oil pushes, the shot starts to play like a reverse block in a hurry; get it going right and it stays right, square up and it hooks a bunch in back. So from there, you're looking at two options. The first option is to move towards the gutter and play up the lane (around first arrow) with *really* soft speed, because there's still quite a bit of conditioner out there. Great in theory, but a hair too fast, and it's three off the right; soften up too much and it's through the face or Brooklyn. The other option is to take it deep inside, to the fifth or sixth arrow, and play up against the left-side oil. This was how I ended up playing them; the out-of-bounds to the right wasn't nearly as severe from in there. When the oil pushed, I had to bump right and switch to something mellower in the midlane to keep the shot under control.
Man, you should have heard all the grousing about that lane condition. The lady in the paddock commented on all the people who walked in with their big averages and then had put up 140s and 150s. She was right. I lost count of all the 210+ averages that I saw who shot games below 150, and some *well* below 150.
If you absolutely need to know, our high team game was 897; we came in right around 1050.
Oh yes...they've relaxed the rules ever so slightly; you can check in up to four balls now. However, you can only have two in the building at any given time; the rest have to stay at the bag check. So if you want to change balls during a set, you'll need to take the ball that you no longer want to use all the way outside to the bag check, wait while they find your bag, do the switcheroo, and run back into the building so that you don't miss your turn in the next frame. And oh, no bags are allowed inside the center. So if you don't have those shoe protector thingies, you'll have to carry your shoes inside along with the two bowling balls you want to throw, and your accessory bag.
So...anyone for Masters qualifying?
