Looking for opinions and then I'll post how I did it later...

We started our summer league tonight and the m.o. on our house is that the patterns in the summer are very unpredictable. One week, it could be the open play shot (our house lays down a pretty medium, flat shot for open play). Or, it could be one of the regular league shots (there are five that vary by length; all are modified THC with more in the middle than outside but the outsides aren't a drastic wall). Or, it could be something different altogether.

I got to the bowl with mostly medium and light equipment, since last year's predominant summer shot was basically dry as a bone.

Tonight, we start out on one pair and had to move 2/3 of the way through practice after a bearing broke and spewed axle grease down in the pit (Ever cleaned axle grease off a ball? I don't recommend the experience.). On both the original pair and the breakdown pair, the lanes went like this:

*Outside 5: No wall. Not OOB, but no artificial bounce room. Shots that went out there were lucky to make it back to the 3 unless you got it out there at 35 feet, at which point it was through the face.

*5-15: Ball would make a weak move back to the pocket. Inconsistent reaction and bad carry. Couldn't get the corners and there were a fair amount of 2-10s.

*Between the 15s: Pretty dry. Felt about as dry as outside 5, actually. Anything thrown in here would not project out and/or would not hold.

Basically, it felt like we had kind of a flat base with extra oil applied between 5-15.

What the competition was throwing:
1. BVP Mammoth, box finish, no-thumber playing 15-5
2. Columbia 300 Wicked, polished, playing straight up 8
3. MoRich Seek & Destroy, spinner release, playing straight up 14
4. Roto Grip Silver Streak SE, playing all over the place
5. Hammer No Mercy, sanded to what felt like 400, playing off the corner with a lot of speed
6. Hammer Blue Vibe, polished, playing off the corner
7. Beginner throwing plastic straight and spraying it

Here's what I had available to me:
MoRich Awesome Finish, box finish, 50/4/50 drill
Lane #1 Tsunami H20, box finish, label drill
Lane #1 G-Force Evolution, box finish, label drill
Ebonite TPC Player, pin under ring, 4000 Abralon plus polish
Ebonite Matrix Conquest, box finish, drilled 6x6
Plastic spare ball

Jess

IMHO, I would have tried to play with a rougher surfaced pearl or a hybrid cover around 17-18 with a little bounce to around 12-13, ball speed around 17.5 mph, and start with about 60% hand.  Everyone trying to play the track area or belly the ball through the condition will do nothing more than burn some track area for me to miss a board or so right and still get the ball to the hole with some authority.
--------------------
Return with your shield or on it.  Strength and honor.

Me

MTIXE

There are good suggestions in all the posts so far and a couple of you hit on exactly what I tried. Here's the recap:

148-192-224

As you can see, I was lost the first game because I was trying to make this thing play like either our fall shot, or was trying to play last year's summer shot.

I started with the Tsunami but switched out of it before we even got out of practice. My Awesome Finish is about 2 boards stronger in the mids and another 1 or 2 stronger on the backend and with everything dead right around my preferred breakpoint (6-8), I thought I needed the extra help.

The first game, though, I was really tilting the ball and trying to loop it. I was trying to get it to save as much as possible for the backend, because there just wasn't much there. However, I combined some bad luck (pocket 7-10 with a pair of 2-8-10s) and bad shotmaking (flagged a 10, missed a 4-7 by clipping the 4 around the 7) and never doubled.

In the second game, I changed hand positions and got right up the back of the ball. I also moved 5 boards right with my feet and instead of trying to go 12-6, started going 10-8. I was headed for a 200+ until I pinched it in the 10th and left a 4-6-7.

I also made my one and only ball change (other than spares) in this game. In the sixth, after starting XX/X/, I switched to the G-Force Evolution. Reason being, note the original post about the no-thumber with the Mammoth. Most of us were right around the same place on the lane, either playing down it or crossing it, but he was really burning up the front half of the mids. So I went to the Evolution here because the AFi started checking up (the strike in the fourth frame of game 2 was all luck -- ball went right through the beak).

Third game was all Evolution, and I shot 222 clean. I started being able to get my hand back around the ball in this game in order to tilt it and get it through the mids. By the end of the third game, the lanes were almost back to "normal."

Next week, by dang, I will take along something with more surface in place of one of those lighter-oil balls.

Jess